How to Write, Share, J and Teach Haiku

Transcription

1 How to Write, Share, J and Teach Haiku WILLIAM J. HIGGINSON WITH PENNY HARTER MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY New York St. Louis San Francisco Bogota Guatemala Hamburg Lisbon Madrid Mexico Montreal Panama Paris San Juan Sao Paulo Tokyo Toronto

2 Copyright 1985 by William J. Higginson All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher FGRFGR8765 ISBN a-d7-02fi7ab-h Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Higginson, William J., The haiku handbook. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Haiku History and criticism I. Harter, Penny. II. Title. PL729.H ISBN (pbk.) 2. Haiku Technique Book design by Patrice Fodero

3 A Note on the Translations and Some Words of Thanks The primary purpose of reading and writing haiku is sharing moments of our lives that have moved us, pieces of experience and perception that we offer or receive as gifts. At the deepest level, this is the one great purpose of all art, and especially of literature. The writer invites the reader to share in the experience written about, and in the experience of the shared language itself. In this handbook you will find haiku in ten different languages, from all inhabited continents of Earth. While I have made all the final versions of the translations unless stated otherwise in the text, a number of people have given of their time and expertise, that we might all share, as nearly as possible, the experiences and the languages of these poems. I am especially grateful to the following. In Japanese, Emiko Sakurai was particularly helpful in identifying and translating poems that reflect the diversity and craft of Issa. Professor Kazuo Sato, head of the International Division of the Museum of Haiku Literature, Tokyo, lent valuable assistance in reviewing the haiku by modern Japanese poets, and spent many hours pursuing the owners of copyrights. Tadashi v

4 vi A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS Kondo has lent his insight and poetic sensitivity to a number of collaborative translations which we have done over the years, several of which appear here. Shortly before the manuscript went to press he reviewed all the translations from Japanese, offering many clarifications and suggestions. In Spanish, Gary Brower and Mark Cramer first brought the variety and depth of continental and Hispanic haiku to my attention. Elizabeth Searle Lamb and Bruce Lamb critiqued some of my Spanish translations, and Maria Luisa Mufioz assisted me in my efforts on her own work. Merlin Marie depauw provided help on some technical points, and assisted in obtaining permission from Spanish-language poets. Denise Gordon and Penny Harter assisted with French, in some cases providing trots and in others helping to develop shades of meaning missing from my early versions. Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard gave me an advance opportunity to read the manuscript of their Haiku: anthologie canadienne/ Canadian Anthology. In German, Petra Engelbert made near-final translations for many of the poems of Imma von Bodmershof, and Volker Schubert assisted me in reviewing poems and criticism by German authors and in making translations. Sabine Sommerkamp helped keep me abreast of the current scene in Germany and also produced some preliminary translations. Wanda Reumer provided information on haiku in Dutch, and reviewed my translations. Katarina von Bothmer checked my work on Hammarskj old's Swedish. Nina Zivancevic reviewed my translations from Serbo-Croatian. All the translations from the Greek of George Seferis were made especially for this book by Manya Bean. In addition to help on translations, my work on The Haiku Handbook has been assisted by many over the years. Two of the earliest to offer encouragement leading to this book were Eric W. Amann, the first editor to publish my translations and criticism, and May D. Harding, a spirited teacher who insisted that I devote

5 A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS vii the same concentration to writing essays that I did to writing poems and translations. Harold G. Henderson offered a kindly ear to the brash young man I was when we met. He said that he hoped his students would surpass his work, and we had many a friendly argument as I tried to do that. I only hope that this handbook may be fit to stand on the foundation that he, R. H. Blyth, and Kenneth Yasuda, each in their different ways, built for my early studies in haiku. Soon after I began actively publishing my translations I discovered Cid Corman's work on early and contemporary Japanese poetry, which helped me to formulate my own concerns as a translator. Cid's letters provided additional encouragement and direction; he was also responsible for putting Tadashi Kondo in touch with me, a service for which I remain very grateful. In the last decade my increasing interest in twentieth century haiku in Japan has been fed by the excellent works of Makoto Ueda. Hiroaki Sato, that most prolific translator of modern Japanese poetry, has provided much new material for haiku enthusiasts to enjoy, and given me reason to re-examine some of my assumptions about form in Japanese poetry. He has also given me a good deal of personal help on one point or another. Among my poet-colleagues in America, Anita Virgil, Cor van den Heuvel, and Michael McClintock have each stimulated my research and writing, and acted as sounding boards for ideas as I developed them. Cor also read through the entire first draft of this handbook and recommended improvements. Thomas Rimer gave the near-final manuscript a thorough reading, and offered helpful suggestions, many of which were adopted. Poets Bill Zavatsky and Ron Padgett, of Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Inc., encouraged and offered valuable criticism of my early writing on teaching haiku. Ron has also written on his own experience teaching haiku. Portions of a piece which he revised for this book at my request appear in Chapter 11.

6 viii A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATIONS For helping me find bits and pieces of information, and encouragement along the way, I am particularly indebted to L. A. Davidson, until recently the recording secretary of the Haiku Society of America; Elizabeth Searle Lamb, editor of Frogpond; Robert Spiess, editor of Modern Haiku; Hal Roth, editor of Wind Chimes; Etiemble, authority on haiku influence in modern European poetry; and Sono Uchida, former Ambassador of Japan to Morocco. C. H. Farr has been a patron of the arts through continued donations to this effort. Bonnie Crown, agent extraordinaire, found me out and asked me to write a new book on haiku before she knew that I had already completed an outline. She then found me a publisher, and schooled me in patience a quality which she exemplifies. Tim McGinnis, my first editor at McGraw-Hill, had the patience and courage to demand my best, and wait for it; his suggestions substantially improved this handbook. Elisabeth Jakab, who became my editor during the last phase of manuscript preparation, pushed the work and me through to its conclusion. And Joan Eckerman, editorial assistant, provided steady encouragement throughout. Penny Harter, whom I first knew as a poet and colleague in teaching students to write, has helped me see this project through in every way imaginable. She has been a sounding board, cotranslator, typist of some early draft chapters, and critic. She has contributed an important chapter on teaching. She has also made our home as peaceful as possible in these three years, despite the many pressures on us as writers, workers, parents, and members of our community. I am deeply grateful for all these assistances; remaining errors are mine alone. W.J.H.

7 A Note on Japanese Pronunciations and Names When space allows I include the originals of works quoted from languages other than English. Japanese originals are given in romaji ("Roman letter") transliteration. Most readers probably have at least a slight acquaintance with the pronunciations of other Western languages. For some, this may be the first introduction to Japanese. Since a transliteration of one language into the phonetic symbols of another is never more than an approximation, I include here a rough guide to pronouncing Japanese words and names. In romaji most consonants sound quite like their values in English. G is always as in "give" or as ng in "sing"; n at the end of a syllable is held longer than in English, and shifts toward m before b, m, and p. A double consonant (except n) indicates a vowel sound now lost, and yields a glottal stop. The vowels of Japanese are all pronounced, with a few exceptions that do not concern traditional poetry. Each vowel represents a unit of duration, all roughly equal in length, unless a macron or doubling indicates twice the length. Vowels in romaji have approximately the same pronunciations as in Italian. The IX

8 x ON JAPANESE PRONUNCIATIONS AND NAMES following table gives some American-English equivalents for Japanese vowels. SHORT VOWELS* LONG VOWELS* a = a in (a, ha i = ee in keep u = o in who e = e in bet o = o in okay tf = aa in aah H = ee in knee il = oo in balloon e" = ey in fey (no diphthong) 0 = ow in blow " "Short" vowels are clipped, about half as long in duration as "long' vowels. Eastern and Western ways of handling names differ. Some writers try to avoid confusion by dealing with all the names in their texts in the same way. The variety of names encountered in this book argued for another approach, summarized below. FULL NAME SHORT FORM AS INDEXED R. H. Blyth Blyth Li Po Li Po Matsuo Basho Basho Tanizaki Junichiro Tanizaki Makoto Ueda Ueda *With a cross-reference: Rihaku, see Li Po. **With a cross-reference: Matsuo Basho, see Basho. Blyth, R. H. LiPo* Basho** Tanizaki JunichirS Ueda, Makoto In the West given names usually precede family names, but family names are given first in indexes, followed by a comma. In Asia, however, family names usually appear first. Thus, in the

9 ON JAPANESE PRONUNCIATIONS AND NAMES xi first four examples Blyth, Li, Matsuo, and Tanizaki are family names. In the West we usually use an author's family name for repeated reference, while in Japan those who write in traditional genres, such as most of those discussed in this book, are known almost exclusively by their personal names, which usually are pen names. Chinese names, such as Li Po, are so short that they are not generally abbreviated. To further confuse things, Japanese usually refer to classical Chinese poets by the Japanese pronunciations for the characters in their names, making one word out of family and personal names. Thus, Li Po becomes Rihaku. The fourth and fifth examples represent modern developments. The novelist Tanizaki has become so well known here that his name often appears Western style, given name first. And writers of modern literature (i.e., in other than traditional genres) are usually called by their family names in both Western and Japanese texts. I retain the traditional Japanese order for these names. But I give the names of Japanese living in the West or writing in Western languages in the order they appear in on their own works, given names first, as in Makoto Ueda. Japanese poets writing in traditional genres appear in the index under their pen names; a cross-reference will be found at their family names. In all other cases, the first name shown in the index is the family name, with a comma indicating a Western, or Westernized, full name.

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11 Contents A Note on the Translations and Some Words of Thanks A Note on Japanese Pronunciations and Names v ix Part One HAIKU OLD AND NEW 1 Why Haiku? 3 2 The Four Great Masters of Japanese Haiku 7 3 Modern Japanese Haiku 25 4 Early Haiku in the West 49 5 The Haiku Movement in English 63 6 Haiku Around the World 77 Part Two THE ART OF HAIKU 7 Nature and Haiku 87 8 The Form of Haiku 97 9 The Craft of Haiku Sharing Haiku 139 xiii

12 xiv CONTENTS Part Three TEACHING HAIKU 11 Haiku for Kids A Lesson Plan That Works, by Penny Harter 165 Part Four BEFORE AND BEYOND HAIKU 13 Before Haiku Haiku Prose Beyond Haiku The Uses of Haiku 243 REFERENCE SECTION Season-Word List and Index 263 Glossary 287 Resources 296 Credits and Acknowledgments 314 General Index 325

13 Part O ne N. > HAIKU OLD AND NEW fc t -^K, ^ =*5JS=

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15 1 Why Haiku? HAIKU HAPPEN We often see or sense something that gives us a bit of a lift, or a moment's pure sadness. Perhaps it is the funnies flapping in the breeze before a newsstand on a sunny spring day. Or some scent on the wind catches us as we step from the bus, or bend to lift the groceries from the car. Something tickles our ankle and, looking down to see what it is, we see more: a baby crab climbs up my leg such clear water Or we are lying awake, alone with our thoughts, and as we turn to look at the clock at midnight a distant door pulled shut and we find ourselves more alone, because of the being on the other side of that door, than when we had no thoughts for others anywhere in the world. 3

16 4 Haiku Old and New The first of these two short poems was written about three hundred years ago by the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. The second is by a twentieth century Japanese poet, Ozaki H6sai. Both poems are haiku. Moments that can give rise to haiku are not foreign to the Americas. Mark Cramer has translated the following poem, originally written in Spanish by the Mexican poet Jose Juan Tablada a few years before Hosai wrote "at midnight": Tender willow almost gold, almost amber, almost light... And just recently New Jerseyan Penny Harter found the old doll her mama box broken to half a cry Haiku happen all the time, wherever there are people who are "in touch" with the world of their senses, and with their own feeling response to it. WHAT HAIKU ARE FOR The other day as my wife and I were going over the checkbook in the dining room one of our daughters, in the west-facing living room, called us to come look at the sky. She saw how the clouds' ragged edges took light from the sun, intensifying both the dark gray of the main body of the clouds and the pale blue of the late autumn sky. She was touched by the lovely picture it all made. She felt that we should see the sky for ourselves, should share directly the experience that triggered her feelings. So she called us. As we looked at the sky, we saw what she saw. And at the

17 WHY HAIKU? 5 same time we thought back to other skies we had known. I felt the mixed feelings of time passing, the loss of the heat of summer and the beginning of the rush toward the winter holidays and the New Year. My wife spoke of the deeper colors that would come later, with the reddening of the sunset. As the three of us looked at the sky, almost wordlessly, we felt a sharing that goes far deeper than the words I have just used to describe the event can ever penetrate. This is the main lesson of haiku. When we compose a haiku we are saying, "It is hard to tell you how I am feeling. Perhaps if I share with you the event that made me aware of these feelings, you will have similar feelings of your own." Is this not one of the best ways to share feelings? When we want to "reach" another person with our feelings, do we just say "I feel sad"? Or "I'm happy"? Unless we tell them what it is that makes us feel sad or happy, how can they share our feelings? In fact, we automatically ask this very question when friends say they feel happiness or sadness, pain or joy: "What is it? What's the matter?" Or "What put that smile on your face?" Haiku is the answer to this "what?" We know that we cannot share our feelings with others unless we share the causes of those feelings with them. Also, we know that sharing the causes for joy and sadness builds a sense of community among our families, friends, co-workers, and organizations. Stating the feelings alone builds walls; stating the causes of the feelings builds paths. Most haiku present dramatic moments the authors found in common, everyday occurrences small dramas that play in our minds. If we but see, but taste, as in these two haiku by Virginia Brady Young and Robert Spiess, respectively: On the first day of spring, snow falling from one bough to another

18 6 Haiku Old and New Snowing... the dentist polishes my teeth Haiku work, as we read them, by giving us a moment to look at some thing, some event, and see it more clearly than we have perhaps seen it before. The author had to stop to take note of this object, this event, and to write it down. If we take the time to read the poem, perhaps we will find ourselves with Elizabeth Searle Lamb, or pausing halfway up the stair white chrysanthemums not seeing the room is white until that red apple with Anita Virgil. Of course, we cannot see the same chrysanthemums that stopped Lamb on the stairs, or know just what sort of apple turned Virgil's room white. But the next time we encounter chrysanthemums perhaps we will look at them more closely, become a sort of Georgia O'Keeffe of chrysanthemums. And Virgil's white room almost makes us instinctively look up at the walls of the room we are in now, reading this. Haiku not only give us moments from the writer's experience, but go on to give us moments of our own. The central act of haiku is letting an object or event touch us, and then sharing it with another. If we are the writer, we share it with the reader. If we read a haiku, we share that moment, or one like it, with the writer. Being small, haiku lend themselves especially to sharing small, intimate things. By recognizing the intimate things that touch us we come to know and appreciate ourselves and our world more. By sharing these things with others we let them into our lives in a very special, personal way.

19 2 The Four Great Masters of Japanese Haiku MATSUO BASHO Haiku begins in the great age of renga, a type of poetry enjoyed by many kinds of people in seventeenth century Japan. Matsuo Basho ( ) was a master of the renga, and made his living traveling around the country, teaching people everywhere he went the art and craft of writing renga, or linked poems. (See Chapter 13, Before Haiku, for a description of renga.) In Basho's day renga belonged to everyone, and particularly to the middle class, the people who lived in the hustle and bustle of one or another town of varying size. Basho was deeply influenced by the Chinese poets of the T'ang Dynasty (seventh to ninth centuries A.D.), particularly Tu Fu, Li Po, and Po Chti-i, who are called To Ho, Rihaku, and Hakurakuten, respectively, in Japanese and many Anglo-Japanese texts. Among Japanese influences, Basho particularly admired the tanka (see Chapter 13) of a 7

20 8 Haiku Old and New Buddhist priest named Saigyo ( ) and the renga of Iio Sogi ( ). All of these poets wrote from an aesthetic of austerity. They often wrote about loneliness, or at least about being alone, usually with a touch of humor. For example: Mid-Mountain Dialogue you ask my purpose roosting in jade peaks smiling yet without reply heart at self ease peach blossoms running water sundown blazes away having another sky & earth not among humans Saigyo's poem is ironic; he is a monk, striving to live "without attachments" even to old, distant friends. It is easier for him to forget the world, to be "happy", without the pleasure of having visits from friends. At the same time, his poem jokes with the Chinese tradition, particularly prominent in the poetry of Li Po and his contemporaries, of writing poems as letters to far-away friends. Similarly, in the Chinese example Li Po seems to be making a serious statement about why he is living in the mountains. But he pokes fun at himself, first by describing himself as "roostto hito mo omoitaetaru yamazato no sabishisa nakuba sumiukaramashi LiPo even visitors have stopped thinking of mountain village loneliness without which living would be unpleasant Saigyo

21 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 9 ing" like a bird, then by answering quite directly the very question he said he would not reply to. This mixture of joking banter and seriousness pervades much of Chinese and Japanese poetry. The poems which Zen monks chose as their favorites, or composed themselves, are filled with images that strike deep into our feelings about the world. At the same time, these poems are likely to contain humorous puns, allusions to other poems or stories sometimes serious, sometimes not or frankly humorous scenes. However, the renga of Basho's youth had descended to mere commonness. When Basho wrote his poem kare-eda ni on a barren branch karasu no tomarikeri a raven has perched aki no kure autumn dusk he was reacting against the petty superficiality of the language and feeling in the poems of his day. This poem, first published in 1680 and later revised to its present form, became the basis for Basho's school of linked-poem composition. As Basho matured in his art he lightened his touch. In 1686 he published what has become the best known poem in the Japanese language, and decreed it the model for his mature style: furuike ya old pond... kawazu tobikomu a frog leaps in mizu no oto water's sound The frog has been a traditional subject of Japanese poetry since the first recorded songs; by Basho's day there were thousands, if not millions of poems involving frogs. But virtually every frog that appeared in a poem up to that time was celebrated for its singing. Even today, Japanese learn the songs of different species of frogs from records, much as we learn the calls of "song birds". But Basho's frog leaps, making a small sound with his action, rather than his voice.

22 10 Haiku Old and New Basho felt himself part of a rich poetic tradition. He was also concerned that poems should be created out of a deep unity of the poet and experience. This unity shows itself in the perceptual and expressive stages of poetic inspiration, as Makoto Ueda has called them. Of the first, or perceptual state, Basho says "Learn of the pine from the pine; learn of the bamboo from the bamboo." One of Basho's disciples explains that to be genuine a poem must contain the spontaneous feeling that comes from the object itself. In effect, the poet's first job is to share in the essential nature of the thing written about. Basho's disciple goes on to say that just as a mere "look at" an object is not enough to produce the deep seeing that begins inspiration, so the writing of a mere description cannot capture the essence of an object the writer's mind has penetrated. Basho says, "In writing do not let a hair's breadth separate your self from the subject. Speak your mind directly; go to it without wandering thoughts." Having shared in the life of an object, the writer must share this life with others through the medium of words. But these words must connect directly to the writer's mind, that is in turn directly connected to the object. This, the expressive stage, logically comes after the perceptual stage. But, as Basho clearly says, the two stages ideally occur as one. In the final poem, both the language of the poem and the mind of the poet should be transparent to the reader, who, on reading the poem, should see directly into the inner life of the object as the poet did. This is the ideal of Basho-School haiku, an ideal almost all haiku poets since have striven to attain.* *A vocabulary of several special terms grew up to express various nuances of this central ideal. Many of the distinctions made by Basho and his disciples have become obscure over the years, but the ideal remains the same. Such terms as sabi, wabi, hosomi, etc., and all Japanese terms which are italicized on first appearance, are defined in the Glossary at the back of this book.

23 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 11 Another of BashS's most famous poems sums it up. He had spent some hours getting to a temple on top of a steep, rocky hill. When he arrived, Basho composed this hokku: shizukasa ya iwa ni shimiiru semi no koe the stillness soaking into stones cicada's cry We should not think of Basho entirely as austere. In addition to many verses that seem like scenes for contemplation he wrote some that call for joy or abandon. Here is one: iza yukamu yukimi ni korobu tokoro made well! let's go snow-viewing till we tumble! He can also see the humor in our insatiable desire for sensation: kumo ori-ori hito o yasumuru tsukimi kana clouds occasionally make a fellow relax moon-viewing! Basho was not known for haiku in his own day. He was a master of a kind of renga called haikai-no-renga, or "humorous linked poem". What we know as haiku Basho called hokku, or "starting verse". For the haiku originated as the starting verse of a renga. BashO also became known in his day for another kind of writing, called haibun, which we can roughly translate as "haiku prose". Basho's haibun vary from short, impressionistic sketches and diary entries to a series of travel journals. The most famous of these, Oku no hosomichi (literally, Narrow Roads of the Interior), is a world classic, as important in its way as The Tale of Genji. The word haikai is often used to apply to all of the haikurelated literature: haiku or hokku, haikai-no-renga, and haibun. Basho is probably the greatest master of all haikai literature, and

24 12 Haiku Old and New so is considered The First Great Master of Haiku, or simply The Master. We will meet many more examples of his work throughout this book. YOSA BUSON Yosa Buson ( ) was a prominent leader in bringing the influence of Southern Chinese painting into Japanese art. He also wrote poems, particularly in the haikai genre, and today is considered the second of the Four Great Masters of Haiku. By Buson's day the haikai-no-renga of Basho's followers had lost some of its steam, and Buson went back to Basho for much of his personal inspiration. More than once Buson copied out entire manuscripts of Basho's travel journals, adding his own enchanting sketches or paintings. Buson's most characteristic verses have a sensual and objective quality that we readily accept from a painter. Here are two examples: yukaze ya evening breeze... mizu aosagi no water laps the legs hagi o utsu of the blue heron yanagi chiri shimizu kare ishi tokoro-dokoro willow leaves fallen clear waters dried up stones one place and another The second poem has all the characteristics of the sort of Chinese landscape painting Buson most admired. The thin branches of the leafless willows hang delicately down over the rocks now free of the brook's waters in the dryness of autumn. However, we should not be too hasty in accepting this as merely a picture. This poem illustrates the layers of allusion that can build up in what seems to be one simple little haiku.

25 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 13 In the preface to the poem Buson tells us that he was "practicing austerities" in the area called Shimotsuke in mid-autumn, and that the poem is a report of "the scenery right in front of my eyes, in the shade of an old tree said perhaps to be 'the pilgrimage willow'." Evidently, he refers to the Narrow Roads of the Interior, where Basho writes the following passage in the same region: Now, the clear-water-flowing willow is still there at the village of Ashino on a path of the fields. The deputy of the area, a certain Kobu, offered now and again to show us this willow; wondered just where, today attending on the very shade of this willow. ta ichimai planting a patch uete tachisaru of field and leaving yanagi kana ah, willow! And Basho, in his turn, assumes that we will know the "clearwater-flowing willow" as that tree of which Saigyo wrote this tanka: michinobe ni at the roadside shimizu nagaruru clear water flowing yanagi kage willow shade shibashi tote koso thinking to rest a while tachitomaretsure have come to a halt This poem of Saigyo's is very well known, for it is the source of inspiration for the no play YugyO Yanagi, The Priest and the Willow. In the play a wandering priest is guided by "the Spirit of the Withered Willow". The spirit tells of a pilgrim who was looking for the source of the clear water at a temple, and found there a "golden light shining. A decayed willow tree suddenly revealed itself as Kannon of the purple willow... it's become a holy place for walking pilgrimage." (Kannon is the Buddhist goddess of mercy.)

26 14 Haiku Old and New I have deliberately written the discussion of allusions in Buson's haiku willow leaves fallen clear waters dried up stones one place and another in the present tense because to a reasonably literate Japanese these layers all exist simultaneously. Saigyo lived from 1118 to 1190; The Priest and the Willow was written by Nobumitsu, who lived from 1435 to 1516; Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior was first drafted in Buson, writing in the mid and late eighteenth century, certainly knew all this literature, and no doubt other stories and no plays that relate to it as well. Further, he felt that the haiku of Basho had died out one might say "withered" or "dried up" by the time he came along, and Buson wrote several haiku alluding to the loss of Basho's teachings. This is one of them. Literary allusions may turn up often in haiku, but in the hands of Buson they never appear without the clarity and power of a strong sensory image. Even when his painterly love of the visual seems to give way to depicting human drama, small and large, Buson never gives up on his senses, as in these two examples: hashi nakute hi kuren to sum ham no mizu nusubito no yane ni kieyuku yosamu kana no bridge and the sun ready to set waters of spring a thief vanishes over the rooftops night chill! In the first we feel the dread of someone the author? stopped at the edge of what is normally a little trickling stream, turned into a rushing torrent by the spring rains. Like the end of the first chapter in a mystery, the sky is about to go dark as we confront the problem. In the second we have a picture worthy of Goya. Shadows surround the puzzled expressions of the people,

27 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 15 awakened by the sound of a thief. They just now begin to feel the chill night air as they stand around asking one another questions in their night dress. Like Basho, Buson was a very versatile writer. In addition to his painting his major activity and source of income he wrote not only haiku and occasional renga, but also verse in Chinese. Writing verse in Chinese had been fashionable centuries earlier, then waned in popularity until Buson's day. Buson wrote very engagingly in the classical Chinese five-word verse form. He also experimented in a sort of irregular Japanese verse that modern scholars have credited with being the first real use of free verse in Japanese, long before the influx of Western influence in the mid-nineteenth century. In two outstanding works Buson very successfully mixed formal Chinese verse with informal Japanese free verse. The best known of these, Shunpa Batei Kyoku, literally "Spring Breeze Horse Levee Tune" (usually translated as something like "On the Banks of the Kema in the Spring Breeze"), also incorporates haiku by Buson and others. It has been translated into English several times. Another example, one that demonstrates how well Buson worked the different pacings of formal Chinese verse and his own Japanese free verse together, is called Denga Ka, "A Lyric of Sluggish River". In the "Lyric" Buson takes on the persona of a woman in a very romantic setting, writing to her lover. She refers to the pleasure boat they share, and her inability to cut loose and go live with him in the city. The sensuality of the subject and the images is a strong foil for her fears. A Lyric of Sluggish River Spring waters float plum blossoms south flowing Vine meets Sluggish brocade hawser do not loosen it rapid stream the boat like lightning

28 16 Haiku Old and New Vine Water meets Sluggish Water flowing together like one body in the boat wishing to sleep with you and be forever people of Naniwa You are like a plum tree on the water the blossoms on the water floating leaving swift I am like a willow on the riverbank the shadow in the water sinking following impossible Today these wonderful verses by Buson are not very well known to the Japanese. Buson is remembered mainly for his haiku and his paintings. But it is important to remember that Buson tried his hand at just about every kind of writing done in his day, and went well beyond others in his development of form. To all his work he brought a painter's love of shape, color, and movement. He also had a humorous eye for the human condition, and a great love of the literature and art of the past. In Chapter 14, Haiku Prose, we will find more of Buson's haiku in a setting that further illustrates the range of his artistry, humanity, and knowledge of earlier literature. KOBAYASHIISSA The third Great Master of Haiku, Kobayashi Issa ( ), was a country bumpkin compared to ascetic, priestly Basho and worldly, sophisticated Buson. The majority of Japanese who like traditional haiku probably know and like Issa better than any other poet. Since he grew up in the country with a cruel stepmother and was banished from his home to city poverty in his mid-teens, Issa had a rather pessimistic view of human nature.

29 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 17 He came to prefer the company of small, seemingly insignificant creatures, and wrote many haiku on such topics as grasshoppers, flies and bugs, sparrows, and other less-than-glamorous beings. One of Issa's best known verses shows his empathy with those who are often not appreciated: yare utsu na hae ga te o sum ashi o sum oh, don't swat! the fly rubs hands rubs feet The fly prays twice as much as most humans. However, Issa was a much more complex person than the standard fare of English language haiku books would lead us to believe. And his relative calm in accepting his difficult life is often obscured by excessively melodramatic and wordy translations of his poems. Professor Emiko Sakurai, of the University of Hawaii, has helped me select and translate the rest of the examples of Issa's haiku in this chapter. We have selected them with an eye toward correcting the imbalance in the popular view of Issa, and have translated them in ways that parallel the originals' lean, unself-pitying language as nearly as possible. Issa, though a child of the rural village, began his career as a poet in the city. Here are a few of Issa's views of life in the poorer quarters of Edo (modern Tokyo): aki no yo ya tabi no otoko no harishigoto autumn night... a traveling man's needlework In the lamplight we see a figure bent over, a needle every now and then gleaming. We realize it is a man, alone, womanless. He has no mother, wife, or girl friend to darn his socks, sew up the split seam of a worn robe. Remember, we are dealing with a time almost two hundred years ago, and a culture where men did not do these things. A womanless man was undoubtedly poor. Certainly Issa was poor.

30 18 Haiku Old and New shigururu ya drizzling... oyawan tataku tapping a large rice bowl oshikojiki deaf-mute beggar But some were worse off than he. kogarashi ya a withering wind jibita ni kururu seated in the falling dusk tsuji utai a street minstrel The bitter wind drives off those who might otherwise stand and listen to the minstrel, as he laughs and sings, bringing joy to himself and the crowd. Kogarashi means literally "tree-witherer"; here not only a tree has been withered. Like Basho, Issa feels how one time penetrates another in the mixture of memory and present moment: kagero ya heat shimmer... me ni tsuki-matou lingering in the eye cbarai-gao a laughing face The rippling view through the rising heat brings to mind someone's rippling laughter, some other time. For Issa the laughing face is that of one of his children who died in infancy. While we do not think of Issa as a sensualist, like Buson he can be very Romantic: onna kara saki e kasumu zo shiohigata the woman leads into the mist low tide beach This is not a bathing beauty, but a fully clothed woman who, barefoot, leads the way to see what treasures the tide has left. The appearance of shells, both empty and full of life, on the beach after the tide goes out has its opposite in the woman, who disappears into the mist. The sea reveals at least a small part of itself as the mist envelops one of those who come to see that revelation. Issa had to fight for everything throughout his life: Mother

31 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 19 love was denied him by his stepmother, who later tried to take away the property that was his birthright. He worked many years in the desolation of city poverty to make a name for himself as a poet. All of his children born during his lifetime died in infancy; the young wives who bore those children died before he did. (One child did survive to inherit his property; she was born to Issa's last wife after he died.) Through it all Issa seemed to draw strength from those small creatures whose lives are so fleeting, who seem so overwhelmed by the elements that we feel they need our encouragement: suzukaze ya cool breeze... chikara ippai with all his might kirigirisu the katydid It is easy to sentimentalize, and thereby trivialize, the life and poetry of Issa. Japanese, as well as Western translators, have often been guilty of doing so. But Issa's verses are usually clear of such sentimentality, the few popularly remembered exceptions notwithstanding. We must not mistake the sympathy, the empathy Issa feels for those who seem to be "underdogs" as pity. People who have not experienced such hardship feel pity for those who have. Issa himself lived through many hardships; when he encourages even grasshoppers and frogs in the face of their adversities, he encourages himself. Issa is also capable of lovely serenity and aesthetic sensibility, and of seeing the humor that constantly plays about human concerns: suzushisa ya the coolness... hangetsu ugoku the half-moon shifts tamari mizu puddles asatsuyu no asagao uruya araotoko morning-dewed morning glories he sells, rough fellow

32 20 Haiku Old and New We should remember Issa as a complex person, capable of mixing humor and pathos, and sensitive to the beauty and mystery of life and our perceptions of it. A reading of his masterful autobiographical haibun, Ora ga ham, literally My Spring, gives a good idea of his range, and of his appreciation for poems by many poets in both the haiku and tanka modes. (See Resources at the end of this handbook.) MASAOKA SHIKI By the time the last of the Four Great Masters of Haiku, Masaoka Shiki ( ), rose to dominate the world of traditional Japanese poetry, the renga had all but died out as a serious art form. Basho was the last truly great master of renga, and though haiku was still thought of as hokku, the starting verse of a renga, none of the masters who followed Basho devoted as much of their efforts to perfecting the renga as Basho had. Buson struggled to establish a new style of painting during his lifetime. Hokku and renga were a diversion for him, although a very important one. Poetry parties over which he presided tended to become contests in composing hokku, rather than collaborative efforts at making a renga. And by the time of Issa poets made their reputations almost entirely on the basis of their individual poems rather than their ability to orchestrate a renga. Just as Basho became the pivot between the renga and the more independent hokku later developed by two centuries of disciples and new masters, so Shiki is at the same time the last of the Great Masters of Haiku and the first poet of modern haiku. He was the first to use the word "haiku", a term originally meaning a verse of haikai-no-renga (and previously seldom used), for the independent hokku. Some scholars and critics feel that Shiki destroyed the hokku/haiku by decreeing the end of renga. Actually, the independence of the hokku had been well established by Shiki's time, and it remained for a major critic to

33 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 21 acknowledge the fact. Shiki was that critic, and his adoption of the word "haiku" for the short verses previously called "hokku" simply completed a process that had begun a century or more earlier. However, Shiki was not concerned with only the haiku. He was also an innovator in the tanka, the other main type of traditional poem in Japanese. Before his death at the age of thirty-five he had established new schools of writing in both genres, an unusual feat. Japanese poets tend to concentrate on one or another of the main poetic genres, though they may occasionally dabble in another mode. Shiki was seriously ill with spinal tuberculosis almost all of his adult life. While his strongly worded essays ranged forth across most of the Japanese literature of past and present, much of his poetry concerns the minutiae of sick-room life. The following tanka gives an impression of his clean, direct style, most unusual for his own day: kame ni sasu stuck in a vase fuji no hanabusa clusters of wisteria hana tarete blossoms hanging, yamai no toko ni in the sick-bed haru kuren to su spring begins to darken There is a harmony between the purple of the wisteria flowers hanging down from the vase and the darkening spring. By using "spring begins to darken" Shiki brings an autumnal feeling into his tanka. This effect deepens as a Japanese reader notes that tarete, which means "drooping" or "hanging", also means "leaving behind", as in "He died, leaving behind just a bed and a table." Perhaps only as we read the last line of Shiki's tanka do we begin to realize that this is a poem, a crafted piece of literature, and not just a picture in words. The haiku, even more than the tanka, often comes close to being merely a word-picture. Many failed haiku are just that. But if we are sensitive to the symbolic value which things and events have for us, then even simple

34 22 Haiku Old and New word-pictures can mean a great deal to us, both as writers and as readers. We share by means of words. But words that are too concerned with how I respond prevent you from responding freely to the object or event that caused my response. For this reason, Shiki demanded that the language of haiku be objective. He fought against the decadent haiku poets of his time who patterned their haiku after some of the more subjective verses of Basho. Shiki believed that Buson was more objective than, and as great a poet as, Basho, and he shocked the haiku world by saying so. Shiki also insisted that verses on the actual objects and events of our lives are better than those made up in the imagination, though he did not prohibit the latter. The following poems point up this contrast between the subjectivity of Basho and the objectivity of Shiki. Basho, in a famous passage of Narrow Roads of the Interior, lingers over the field where a long-past, historic battle was fought. He writes this haiku, one of his best known: natsugusa ya summer grass... tsuwamonodomo ga those mighty warriors' yume no ato dream-tracks Shiki, during a brief time in China as a war correspondent, also writes a battlefield haiku: nashi saku ya the pear blossoming... ikusa no ato no after the battle this kuzure ie ruined house In both poems there is a pun on the word ato, which may be written any of three ways: as a character meaning "track"; as a character meaning "after"; or in phonetic script which leaves the choice up to the reader according to the context. Basho chooses "track" and Shiki writes the word in ambiguous phonetics. Though Shiki's ato is part of a phrase where it will be taken to

35 THE FOUR GREAT MASTERS OF JAPANESE HAIKU 23 mean "after" rather than "track", there are enough echoes of Basho to suggest that his choice of ambiguity is not accidental. The entire middle line of Shiki's haiku is written in phonetic script. This would not be unusual, except that Shiki tends to write most of the words in his haiku in the less ambiguous characters, and since he was a war correspondent it is highly unlikely that he did not know the character for ikusa, "battle". More likely, he intends the reader to recall Basho's poem, which begins with the kusa, "grass", of natsugusa, and ends with ato. Thus Shiki writes a poem that gives us a vision of human nature and the rest of nature intertwined in contemporary battle ruins and pear blossoms, and at the same time he pokes a kind of fun at the naive veneration of ancient warriors expressed in Basho's haiku. He contrasts the broad landscape of a battlefield, suggested in Basho's poem, with the remains of a house, probably the home of some family now refugees, or worse. The bravery of legendary heroes, with the commonness of everyday living, both destroyed by war. By including a ruined house, rather than a ruined castle or fort, and writing at the scene of a recent battle, rather than of some long-ago event, Shiki has modernized the haiku, brought it into the present tense, and made the cruelty of war, rather than its grandeur, a fit subject for haiku. There is a haiku by Ito Shou, a well known haiku master of Shiki's day, which has the preface "Sekigahara Remembrance": kono shita ni under this, eiyu no hone ya heroes' bones... nokoru yuki left-over snow This modern image, coupling the scraps of melting snow with the whiteness (in the mind) of the bones beneath it, is indeed striking. However, this poem is clearly closer to the poem of Basho in feeling. Compare this patriotism that stands on the location of an old battle (fought in 1600) and alludes to Basho's model poem for such an occasion, and the mixed feelings of one who

36 24 Haiku Old and New stands in the smoking ruins of a battle just over, wondering why poets eulogize such insanity. Both are excellent poems, but they expose quite different sorts of consciousness. Yet Shiki is not so different from Basho, Buson, Issa, or the rest of us. Consider this poem of his in comparison with the woman Issa saw leading the way into the mist at the low-tide beach: koginukete kasumi no soto no umi hiroshi rowing through out of the mist the wide sea Shiki, who stayed pretty well within the confines of traditional formal restrictions, was willing to stray to catch the lumbering awkwardness of a horse: natsugawa ya summer river... hashi wa aredomo uma there's a bridge, but the horse mizu o yuku goes through water This haiku is practically a story, while the next is a mystery, one which we contemplate with mild curiosity: aki harete mono no kemuri no sora ni iru autumn clear the smoke of something goes into the sky In the next chapter we will look at some of the major figures who came into prominence after 1900, with just a few poems by each so we can get a feel for their styles and concerns and how they continue the basic tradition of sharing that is the real core of haiku.

37 Modern Japanese Haiku KAWAHIGASHI HEKIGODO Shiki left a number of disciples and confederates when he died in Kawahigashi Hekigodo ( ) was most prominent among the younger generation who wished to continue renovating haiku. All of his earlier work is in traditional form, but much of it shows his freshness in taste, both as to subject and treatment. For example: to hanabi oto shite nani mo nakarikeri tonbo tsuru sao yoru nami ni sutete yukinu far fireworks sounding, otherwise not a thing the dragonfly catching pole, to the calling waves abandoned and left Fireworks, of course, are not particularly modern in Japan. Most fireworks haiku deal with the visual effects; the word hanabi 25

38 26 Haiku Old and New literally means "flower-fire". But Hekigod5's fireworks are heard only, not seen. In effect, he has duplicated Basho's movement from frogs' songs to frogs' actions in furuike ya. The sense of allure and entrapment in the second poem above builds an atmosphere similar to the Sirens of Odysseus. Each new part of the poem unfolds a shift in meaning. We move from "dragonfly catching" an act to the pole which performs that act. The pole has been left free, but seems trapped by "the calling waves". It is hard to imagine a way to pack more drama into such a short poem. These two poems demonstrate the range of emotion and coloring that Hekigodo could build into the brief haiku, the contrast between an extremely ascetic, spare image by itself in the first and a heavily layered, compound image in the second. Hekigodo's virtuosity attracted many followers, including Ogiwara Seisensui, who had begun to abandon the traditional form of haiku. Hekigodo agreed with this. He wanted the poem to come as close to reality as possible, without the interference of man-made rules. With these principles he started the New Trend Haiku Movement. For the rest of his career Hekigodo experimented with disregarding the seventeen-sound pattern, often writing longer, rather "bumpy" haiku like these: konogoro tsuma naki recently wife died yaoya grocer's na o tsumu stacking greens negi o tsumu stacking onions, aruji musume husband and daughter toku takaki ki natsu chikaki tateri tatamu yane ni a distant, tall tree summer near, standing over folded roofs In the first of these we see how the grocer and his daughter go on with their work, but always in the knowledge of the recent death. The relationship between husband and daughter, and

39 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 27 between them and the work, has changed. This change affects the way they look, the rhythms and angles of their bodies not to mention the way we look at them. The second poem collapses space; the far-off tree looms over the jutting folds of the many roofs. Time also collapses; this is more apparent in the original, where takaki, "tall", and chikaki, "near", make the tree and summer one thing, both far and near. We feel the closeness of summer, and of the houses to one another, in the repeated sounding of k and t in the first seven words of the poem, and the opening of the soft sounds at the end brings in the distance. TAKAHAMA KYOSHI While editing Hototogisu ("cuckoo"), the magazine founded under Shiki's guidance, Takahama Kyoshi ( ) had devoted most of its pages to the new fiction of modernist writers such as his good friend Natsume Soseki and Soseki's protege, Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Kyoshi himself wrote novels and travel diaries. After Shiki's death Hototogisu became almost exclusively a fiction magazine for a number of years. But Kyoshi had been Shiki's other star pupil, equal to Hekigodo in importance. Though Kyoshi himself had said that Hekigodo was the most promising haiku poet among Shiki's students at the time of their master's death, he became increasingly upset by the liberties Hekigodo's group was taking. In 1912 he issued a statement to the effect that true haiku were written in the traditional way, with seventeen sounds and seasonal reference. He began putting haiku in Hototogisu again, and quickly attracted many fine poets who had not been pleased with developments in the New Trend Haiku Movement. Kyoshi became mentor to dozens of new poets in two succeeding generations, many of whom went on to establish schools of haiku composition and magazines of their own. Kyoshi also outlived virtually all of the other impor-

40 28 Haiku Old and New tant poets of his generation, and Hototogisu, under the editorship of his son Toshio, continues to be one of the leading haiku magazines. To this day his name and ideas dominate conversations about modern haiku. Kyoshi's strong opinions, bolstered by quoting Shiki's most conservative statements, were widely disseminated by his students and Hototogisu, the most important magazine in the haiku world throughout the 1920s. Yet, for all his power, the haiku of Kyoshi are very mild in tone, and tend to speak of specifically Japanese subjects in a very traditional way. Most would be hard for us to distinguish from verses written a century earlier: ame harete rain cleared shibaraku bara no for a while the wild rose's nioi kana fragrance tabisen to omoishi haru mo kure ni keri this spring too when I had thought to travel has ended Staying within the confines of the experimentalism of a century earlier, Kyoshi still did write some powerful haiku in the traditional mode; here is one: hakizome no hoki ya tsuchi ni narehajimu the first sweeping's broom... begins to get used to the soil Kyoshi breaks the flow of this poem in the middle, countering the traditional rhythm. This break in the rhythm accords well with the perception, which perhaps stopped Kyoshi in the act of sweeping with the new broom. I wonder if Kyoshi saw the soil on the just-used broom as the dot of black at the center of the white area in the yin-yang symbol and if he saw the breakdown of the five-seven-hve form forecast in the haiku of Buson, who also often used a mid-poem break in his own haiku.

41 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 29 OGIWARA SEISENSUI While Kyoshi's long career as the main haiku master of all Japan was getting under way, Hekigodo's group was breaking up. Ogiwara Seisensui ( ), who had helped convince Hekigodo to drop traditional form, dropped Hekigodo and took the magazine he had established at Hekigodo's bidding in a new direction. In the pages of Soun ("stratus clouds") Seisensui argued for a haiku that would illustrate the subjective feelings of the writer, rather than the objective world that caused the writer's feelings. Thus his poems reveal more of the writer than do Hekigodo's, with which they may be compared: yume mo mizu ni nete ita yo suzume no koe ama no gawa mo koku natta koto ytite wakareru not seeing a dream slept the night sparrows' voices the Milky Way too has become intense we said and parted In the first, the noise of the sparrows points up the silence of the dreamless sleep. In the second, the intensity of the starry band becomes an image for the intensity of feeling with which the persons parted. This latter, almost a love poem, has a metaphoric or symbolic level similar to that found in the tanka of the old court poets. The tension in the poem arises from the interactions of the persons, not the depth of sensation one person experiences. Seisensui's Soun became the most widely read of the Free- Meter Haiku Movement magazines, and Seisensui kept up a heavy correspondence with many of the poets he published. This sometimes led to dialogues in verse, such as the following poem

42 30 Haiku Old and New by Santoka and Seisensui's reply: ushiro sugata no shape of a back-side shigurete yuku ka going off in a drizzle? hito o yobu ka to tori no yobu koe calling someone? the bird's calling voice A question suggests subjectivity in haiku; in the following poem Seisensui uses ka (a sort of verbal question mark) to further increase the sense of mystery and space in the metaphor of a thousand tatami mats: umi wa michishio ka sea at high tide? tsuki wa senjo on a thousand mats the moon hikari o shiku spreads light TANEDA SANTOKA Taneda Santoka ( ) married as a young man, took up modern business, and "dropped out" to become a beggar poet. Though on the fringes of society, he had studied haiku as a youth, and corresponded with and had haiku published by Seisensui in Soun. Santoka left the cities and lived in one or another small hut in the countryside, often walking miles each day jotting notes and haiku and occasionally accepting a little food from people he met along the way. His poems are full of the natural landscape most Japanese were leaving to enter the hectic modern life of the cities: wakeitte mo wakeitte mo aoi yama further in yet further in yet green hills

43 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 31 Santoka, like most of the wandering mendicants of old Japan, lived as he pleased. He also wrote that way: nonbiri ibari sum taking a leisurely pee kusa no me darake in lush sprouting grass While the Japanese do not consider "four-letter words" taboo in the way that Westerners do, there are some images that one does not generally include in the more courtly poetry but both Basho and Buson, and a host of other haiku poets, have written poems with urine and other excreta in them. ishi ni tonbo mahiru no yume miru on a rock the dragonfly looks at midday dreams Perhaps Santoka's dragonfly relates to Chuang-tzu's butterfly. In the old Chinese Taoist scripture, Chuang-tzu said that when he wakened from a dream he was puzzled: Was he a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming himself to be a man? Here it seems the dragonfly dreams Santoka. At his best, Santoka recites the simple facts of his life, without considering style, form, or content. This simplicity produces his most moving poems, such as the following: ko no ha chiru tree leaves fall arukitsumeru walking on and on OZAKI HOSAI Ozaki Hosai ( ) was also a beggar; he spent years begging and doing odd jobs around Kyoto temples before settling in a cottage on a small island of Japan's inland sea. While Santoka's

44 32 Haiku Old and New poems are full of the loneliness of wandering out in the country away from people, Hosai's city life seems to have been lonelier still: seki o shite mo hitori coughing, even: alone Hosai began writing while in middle school and was admitted to Seisensui's haiku circle by the time he was twenty. He was an excellent student, and seemed bound for a brilliant career in the life insurance business after graduating from law school at Tokyo Imperial University. But something went awry, and Hosai gave up his home, family, and business to try first one and then another of the new, militant religions of Japan. The only thing he took with him into his new life was his haiku. Hosai abandoned traditional verse form, and, like Santoka, stayed within the simple confines of his life for his subject matter. He made his way doing menial work around the temples, which is sometimes reflected in his poems: uchisokoneta kugi ga kubi o mageta the misstruck nail bent its neck We may imagine that Hosai was irritated by this, but he seems to suggest that the nail is sad because it was hit incorrectly. If Hosai's life and religious seeking seem confused, his poetic vision was not. He was capable of sketching the people as well as the objects around him: yuki wa haretaru kodomora no koe ni hi ga ataru snow stopped in the voices of children the sun shines And himself: nagisa furikaeru waga ashiato mo naku looking back at the beach even my footprints are gone

45 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 33 Personal pronouns do not appear frequently in Japanese haiku; here Hosai has used "even my" in anything but a casual way. At first suggesting self-pity, these words then call up the reflection "even my footprints, just now made, are gone what of the hundreds, the many generations, that have gone before me?" Thus while seeming to mourn his own passing Hosai actually joins in the universal lament for all the generations of mankind. NAKATSUKAIPPEKIRO Another poet of the generation of Santoka and Hosai, Nakatsuka Ippekiro ( ) was more modern in subject matter and treatment, as well as rhythmically unfettered. He gained a wide reputation because he vehemently refused to pay attention to traditional haiku form or seasonal references the two characteristics which most Japanese still feel define haiku. To him these were superficial, and he frankly did not care whether traditionalists accepted his poems as haiku or not. At one time or another he worked closely with Hekigodo and Seisensui, and edited two different magazines of modernist haiku. Ippekiro wrote many poems far longer than traditional haiku. In this example the opening words might have served another poet as a title or preface, but Ippekiro moves the reader straight into the poem without pause: natsu-asa hinmin no ko ga hiki-kakaetaru hitotsu no kyabetsu summer morn a child of the poor tugging and hugging a head of cabbage Like most haiku, the original of this poem is one column of Japanese writing, but the verse-lines indicated seem natural to it. The opening rhythm of the following haiku suggests that it is in an alternative rhythm occasionally used in the days of renga,

46 34 Haiku Old and New but there is no convenient place to break the rest: kuraku natsu no yo darkening summer night tsuchi o ki no ne no hashiru through the ground tree roots run Ippekiro found a variety of striking images, and put them into short verses in varying forms. I believe that the Japanese reader of such haiku naturally finds the irregular rhythms suggested by the grammar and syntax. The following two poems, selected for inclusion side-by-side in an anthology edited by Ippekiro himself and Seisensui in 1940, demonstrate some of the variety of Ippekiro's approach. I have left the rhythms of the translations for the reader to discover, as must be done with almost all haiku in Japanese. yama-nobe no tori wa ori-ori ni sakebi fuyu no kumo the mountain-side bird occasionally screams winter clouds kusa ao-ao ushi wa sari grass green-green the cows pass Perhaps when a Japanese reader is forced to read a poem more than once to understand the grammar and rhythm the reader of a translation should have to also. But overemphasizing the formal aspects of any poem destroys its value for the human beings involved in it; we must read Ippekiro's poems for the brilliance of his images, the humanity of his observations, and the depth of his feelings for the objects and events he records, as we read or should read all haiku. MIZUHARA SHUOSHI While Seisensui was dominating the world of free-meter haiku from the helm of SOun, and another influential member of Hekigodo's group, Osuga Otsuji, broke ranks to move in a more con-

47 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 35 servative direction, Kyoshi kept on attracting new disciples. One of the more prominent of these was Mizuhara Shuoshi ( ), who brought many other students into Kyoshi's camp. After a decade and more, Shaoshi broke with Kyoshi's Hototogisu group, however, taking a number of important followers with him. Shuoshi writes within the confines of traditional form and season feeling, but his haiku combine drama and color in ways not consistently achieved by other poets. Two contrasting haiku give an idea of his range: tsubo ni shite stuck in a vase miyama no ho no deep mountain magnolia hana hiraku blossoms open Oki inu tachimukaeta.ru satsuki yami the huge dog risen in greeting June darkness And here are two more, from a group published in the mid- 1970s under the title "Passionate Spring": numa mo ta mo swamp or paddy...? wakanedo aze ni on the nursery ridge tanishikago a snail basket moya nokoru on the side where kata ni hirakishi mist remains the opening botan ari peonies are Of the first of these, Professor Kazuo Sato suggests that it is dusk or hazy, so we cannot tell whether the landscape is wild or cultivated; but we do see a basket of edible snails on the ridge. Shuoshi's dynamic haiku remain consistent throughout his long career. A number of his students and associates, however, went off in their own directions.

48 36 Haiku Old and New HASHIMOTO TAKAKO Hashimoto Takako ( ) began the study of haiku under another woman, Sugita Hisajo, who had been active in the Hototogisu group under Kyoshi and broke away to promote women's haiku. Takako's generation contains a number of well-known women haiku poets. But instead of shutting herself off in the slightly separate world of "women's haiku", Takako was a leading figure among those who had studied with Kyoshi and Shuoshi and broken away from both. She joined with Yamaguchi Seishi to found TenrO ("Sirius") in 1948 a magazine that continues today. Takako can write poems of great beauty and striking drama on very traditional subject matter, as in these two examples: kiri no naka higurashi naku o ake to suru hi o keseba jimushi no yami o isshoku ni amid fog to the clear-cicada cries dawn comes as the light's put out the ground beetles' darkness to one color Many of Takako's haiku involve herself directly; she becomes an active participant, in both her sensations and her thoughts: araigami yuku tokoro mina shizuku shite ryuto ni kotoba takushite tsuki hanatsu fresh-washed hair everywhere I go making trickles entrusting words to a floating lantern I push it adrift

49 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 37 The first of these, published in 1962, forms an interesting counterpoint to Larry Wiggin's sensual wind: the long hairs on my neck which was first published in 1974 in the United States in The Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel. Takako knows, as the second poem shows, that even her words are not immortal. NAKAMURA KUSATAO Three of Shuoshi's students who departed from the pleasant sensuality of their master were known as the "Human Exploration School". One of the group, Ishida Hakyo, became seriously ill during the war and never fully recovered. Nakamura Kusatao and Kato Shiison each led vigorous lives as haiku masters and magazine editors well into the 1970s, however. They have gone in somewhat different directions in their haiku, but both poets were deeply affected by the war. Nakamura Kusatao ( ) seems to have become strongly attached to the delicate meanings in the simplest small acts and observations. naki tomo kata ni te o nosuru goto aki hi nukushi like a dead friend putting a hand on the shoulder the autumn sun warms mikazuki noseta mizuwa kochira e kitagaru yo the crescent-moon-carried water rings want to come over here!

50 38 Haiku Old and New Kusatao wants to find the human, the comforting, in the world around him, and in himself, as these two poems attest: yake ato ni the concrete left nokoru tataki ya in the fire's wake... tetnari tsuku a ball bounces tsuma dakana shunchfl. no jari fumite kaeru to hold my wife treading spring noon's gravel going home Whether watching a child bounce a ball in the ruins of a burnt-out house, or turning homeward to embrace his wife, Kusatao shows us the tenderness and strength of one who has lived through much death, and therefore all the more treasures life. KATO SHUSON Kato Shuson (b. 1905) already had a vision of death and the macabre before the war, as the dramatic pieces from his first collection, Kanrai, "Midwinter Thunder", demonstrate; for example: kanrai ya midwinter thunder... ima wa naki me o under the burden of just-nowoite iku dead eyes, alive It is not easy to watch the life go out of someone's eyes. We carry such an image with us for a long time. Thunder always suggests danger, but the winter thunder storm carries a special chill. Through these things we do go on living, if we can. Living under the air raids of the war deepened Shuson's sensibility. Here is a haiku from a verse-diary of January 1945: toro no the praying mantis ono o agetsutsu still raising his axes yakaretari all burnt up

51 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 39 Indeed, the front pincers of the praying mantis do look a bit like axes. But Shuson's use of this metaphor is no casual selection of a mere physical look-alike for descriptive purposes. Here the metaphor not only etches a vivid picture on the retina of the mind's eye, it also takes us away from the sentimental idea of the insect imploring some power from heaven to rescue it, and gives us instead an image of anger amid the raging fire. (The Japanese toro has about the same associations as its English, counterpart, "praying" mantis.) And this is perhaps Shuson's most famous haiku: hi no oku ni in the fire-depths botan kuzururu saw the way sama o mitsu a peony crumbles It resulted from an air raid in which his house was destroyed and he and his wife became separated from their children. While we may read it to mean that he saw a peony crumble in the depths of the fire, I suspect that "the way/ a peony crumbles" is a metaphor for the way a frame building's walls buckle and then fall in a roaring fire, much the way the petals of a peony wither and then fall from the blossom. Our lives and the buildings we live them in may have some of the lush beauty of a peony; they have also its delicate vulnerability. Though these themes are often present in his poetry, we should not think of Shuson exclusively as a poet of fire and death. In 1952 he took a trip to a hot-spring spa, and the peace of that place produced the following pair of verses. The Tsugaru Plain spreads out below the slopes of the spa, west of Aomori in northern Japan. ganka tsugaru looking over Tsugaru kata hanareyuku taking leave of my shoulder natsu no cho the summer butterfly

52 38 Haiku Old and New Kusatao wants to find the human, the comforting, in the world around him, and in himself, as these two poems attest: yake ato ni the concrete left nokoru tataki ya in the fire's wake... temari tsuku a ball bounces tsuma dakana shunchfl. no jari fumite kaeru to hold my wife treading spring noon's gravel going home Whether watching a child bounce a ball in the ruins of a burnt-out house, or turning homeward to embrace his wife, Kusatao shows us the tenderness and strength of one who has lived through much death, and therefore all the more treasures life. KATO SHUSON Kato Shuson (b. 1905) already had a vision of death and the macabre before the war, as the dramatic pieces from his first collection, Kanrai, "Midwinter Thunder", demonstrate; for example: midwinter thunder... under the burden of just-now- dead eyes, alive kanrai ya ima wa naki me o oite iku It is not easy to watch the life go out of someone's eyes. We carry such an image with us for a long time. Thunder always suggests danger, but the winter thunder storm carries a special chill. Through these things we do go on living, if we can. Living under the air raids of the war deepened Shuson's sensibility. Here is a haiku from a verse-diary of January 1945: WrO no the praying mantis ono o agetsutsu still raising his axes yakaretari all burnt up

53 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 39 Indeed, the front pincers of the praying mantis do look a bit like axes. But Shuson's use of this metaphor is no casual selection of a mere physical look-alike for descriptive purposes. Here the metaphor not only etches a vivid picture on the retina of the mind's eye, it also takes us away from the sentimental idea of the insect imploring some power from heaven to rescue it, and gives us instead an image of anger amid the raging fire. (The Japanese WrO has about the same associations as its English, counterpart, "praying" mantis.) And this is perhaps Shuson's most famous haiku: hi no oku ni in the fire-depths botan kuzururu saw the way sama o mitsu a peony crumbles It resulted from an air raid in which his house was destroyed and he and his wife became separated from their children. While we may read it to mean that he saw a peony crumble in the depths of the fire, I suspect that "the way/ a peony crumbles" is a metaphor for the way a frame building's walls buckle and then fall in a roaring fire, much the way the petals of a peony wither and then fall from the blossom. Our lives and the buildings we live them in may have some of the lush beauty of a peony; they have also its delicate vulnerability. Though these themes are often present in his poetry, we should not think of Shuson exclusively as a poet of fire and death. In 1952 he took a trip to a hot-spring spa, and the peace of that place produced the following pair of verses. The Tsugaru Plain spreads out below the slopes of the spa, west of Aomori in northern Japan. ganka tsugaru looking over Tsugaru kata hanareyuku taking leave of my shoulder natsu no cho the summer butterfly

54 40 Haiku Old and New uma arau shidai ni shojo hoho atsushi washing the horse gradually the maiden's cheek warms Like Kusatao, Shuson is concerned with people. These final two examples of his work are from a group of haiku written in 1956, called "Steel Making People": kajikamitsutsu kikai fuku te no toki ni nigiri in the numbing cold the hand wiping the machine occasionally tenses hiete takumashi cool and stout abura hikari no the oily glistening hiji gashira elbow tip Shuson's haiku often have the quality of a "freeze-frame" or "stop-action" shot that pulls a momentary flash of elbow out of the total impression of a factory or foundry. KANEKO TOTA The occasional use of metaphor in the poems of Shuson expands widely in the work of Kaneko Tota (b. 1919), a poet influenced by Shuson who has now come to be one of the major figures of Japanese haiku. Tota seems to have incorporated into his work many of the "new" techniques of the previous fifty years or more. When he employs them, however, they seem all of a piece with his work, rather than somehow stitched onto the haiku tradition like patches. For example, is the following poem surreal, or simply a metaphor? kawa no ha yuku the river's teeth go asa kara ban made from morning to evening kawa no ha yuku the river's teeth go

55 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 41 During a trip to northern Japan Tota stayed in a town where he encountered what he calls a "green bear" (aoi kuma). We can take "green" in this instance to mean "tenderfoot" or young. Here are two of his poems on the green bear: aoi kuma chyaperu no asa wa randa randa aoi kuma karakuta akichi ni kin no fu green bear the chapel's morning pounding pounding green bear in the junky vacant lot cast iron stomach The chapel bells pound the air as if to drive one to distraction. But the junk-filled empty lot becomes a picnic. The Japanese phrase which I have translated as "cast iron stomach" (kin no fu) has also the connotation that the bear is coming to understand metal. Another group of haiku from the north concerns the salmon which swim up from the sea to spawn. In this group Tota mixes his penchant for metaphor with pure, clean haiku classic in their simplicity. Three samples: hone no sake ainu no boshi ni shigeri no ki the bony salmon to the Ainu mother and child a luxuriant tree hone no sake the bony salmon yoake no ame ni in the rain at daybreak umi no niku flesh of the lake hone no sake the bony salmon umi no ma-otome a pure virgin of the lake hiza daite hugging her knees In these three poems we see Tota's ability to penetrate the minds of others, in this case the minds of a mother and child. The Ainu are the aborigines of Japan, who have been treated much the same way Euro-Americans treated the natives of North America. Just as there is something deeply satisfying in the appearance

56 42 Haiku Old and New of a tree in full leaf, so the salmon these fish in front of us move the Ainu more than the mere fact of a full food supply. And what are the fish but the "flesh of the lake", as the birds are the flesh of the sky. Finally, we have the tender, innocent girl, "hugging her knees" as she watches the salmon, a picture with more mystery and depth in its simplicity than most artists can manage on however large a canvas. CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE HAIKU As we have seen, the Japanese haiku in the twentieth century continues to grow and change, expanding its ability to record and make available for sharing much of the diverse content of modern life. It is no longer restricted to a simple observation of natural phenomena indeed, it never was so restricted. But as modern life has enlarged our experience and our sensibility haiku has enlarged to include the kinds of events and perceptions that modern people often find striking or touching, and may wish to record for their own future contemplation or sharing with others. The writing and sharing of haiku engage hundreds of thousands of Japanese today, not just a few haiku masters. There are a number of large, national-circulation magazines in Japan with titles like Haiku, Haiku Study, and Haiku and Essays. There are hundreds of haiku-club magazines, also issued monthly. The smallest of these magazines contains hundreds of haiku per issue, and haiku from the smaller magazines often get reprinted in the larger nationals or in annual anthologies distributed locally or nation-wide. Each of the twentieth century Japanese haiku poets we have looked at so far is or was a nationally known poet and the editor of one or more highly influential magazines. But the essence of haiku activity in Japan is in the small haiku clubs, where people from diverse backgrounds meet to compose, discuss, and publish their own and one another's haiku.

57 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 43 Itadori is one of several haiku monthlies published in the city of Matsuyama, the home town of Masaoka Shiki, Kawahigashi Hekigodo, Takahama Kyoshi, and Nakamura Kusatao. The magazine features a group of ten poems, each by a different poet, at the front of each issue. The following group from Itadori, called "Autumn Loneliness Selections", may serve as an example of the diversity and vigor of the mainstream of Japanese haiku in recent years. I have offered a few comments to explain the unfamiliar or show something of what I received from each poem. Readers need not limit themselves to my interpretations: hirakikitta tairin no kiku hinyari sum all rolled out this large chrysanthemum a chill Ueda Isemi Picture one large white chrysanthemum, right at its peak. akiaji no autumn salmon batabata haneru the flipping leaping no o tsukamu one I catch Takahashi Kazuo The apparent abandon of this poem cannot quite hide the grip of nature's cycle. shiozuke no daikon no aji tsuki to futari the flavor of the salt-pickled daikon the moon and I Fujimoto Kanseki The root of the daikon, a large white radish, is pickled in brine. The author eats alone, and makes the moon a companion. fuyu no hoshi winter stars kokyo seseragi home town brook murmuring taenia nashi incessantly Matsuura Takuya

58 44 Haiku Old and New What some smell, sound, or sight will do to the memory. suteu naku sokobie no yo no ushoburaku castoff cormorants cry the deep cold of the dark at the birdkeeper's cottages Sakai Yamahiko Fishing with trained cormorants (large, black birds) takes place in the summer and early fall around Gifu, northwest of Nagoya. The boats move over the river at night, when the moon is not out, carrying bright flares, Fish are attracted by the light. The birds catch the fish; a loop around the neck prevents them from swallowing the larger fish, which they deposit in the boats. But now the season for fishing is over. taifu semaru a typhoon bears down hama ni ryoma no on the beach stands Ryoma, futokorode arms folded Kinoshita Michiteru When a typhoon is coming people scurry about, tying down this, closing that, barring doors and windows. Michiteru sees, or envisions, one man who stands calmly, watching the approaching storm. This man seems like Sakamoto Ryoma, a hero of Shikoku (the island on which Matsuyama is situated) who helped lead a movement to reform the government toward the end of the feudal era in Japan. The poem may be taken as an allegory for Ryoma's calm in the face of increasing Western interest (the "typhoon") in "opening" Japan. Still, there is a haiku moment here in the literal meanings: a man stands on the beach, calm in the face of the increasingly wild waves and sky. akimatsuri autumn festival chigo osoroi ni the children all alike mayu kakare eyebrow-decked Oka Sueno

59 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 45 Gaily dressed and made-up children make a charming sight at the local harvest festival. But the contrast between the young and the meaning of the harvest can deepen the emotion with a touch of the lament, familiar to people of all cultures, "the grasses of the field, that withereth." sue no inu porcelain dog hinemosu shttshi all day long autumn loneliness ware o mamoru watches over me Some companions make us feel more alone. Takeda Chie tosaji kite here in Tosa shii no mi kaishi buying pasania nuts onnazure man with a woman Ebisuya Kiyoko Pasania trees used to be quite common in southern Japan. The fruit is conical, something like an acorn, and is eaten raw or roasted. Most of the trees have disappeared. But in the old province of Tosa in southern Shikoku, noted for keeping its traditions alive, pasania trees still flourish. The man buying pasania nuts at the roadside stand is probably a tourist from some other part of Japan, enjoying the rustic setting. chi ni hibiki hasa mata hitotsu ame ni taoru the ground echoes yet another rice rack collapsing in rain lzumi Sumie The sheaves of rice, set out to dry on the hasa, soak up the untimely rain; the racks collapse under the added weight, with a thud. From the classical aesthetics of appreciating a flower and the comforting rituals of the season and observing tourists, through the depths of loneliness mirrored in our surroundings, fantasies

60 46 Haiku Old and New of a sporting or historical nature, even to the despair implicit in the way nature undermines our most serious and carefully thought-out plans for physical and economic well-being, these ten poems give a fair impression of the range of emotions, moods, and perceptions that find their home in modern Japanese haiku. HAIKU ENDURING In Japan there are many kinds of poetry, as there are in most vital cultures. There are still a number of poets who concentrate on writing the traditional tanka, the "short poem" (it is a little shorter than two haiku) that has been the main variety of Japanese lyric poem since the seventh century or earlier. There are poetic genres which have much the same place in Japan that the limerick does in the Anglo-American tradition. There are traditional folk songs in both relatively free and set forms. And, for the last hundred years or more there has been a vigorous growth of modern, free-verse poetry which, as in the West, is now understood to be the dominant force in serious literature. Not to mention the rise of an entertainment industry patterned on Western mass-media culture, with its popular-song writers. But the haiku endures. Despite its limitations, both as to length and subject matter, and despite the competition with other poetic genres, writers of haiku go on recording their impressions of life in these short poems, and sharing them with others in ways as casual as a chance conversation over a cup of tea or coffee and as formal as a guest reading or lecture by a major poet or critic. A haiku written out on a special card by a master becomes a treasured art object. Almost every newspaper has its haiku column, and being chosen to select the poems for a haiku club's magazine is a great honor. Why does the haiku endure in Japan? I think the reasons are few and easy to understand. We all admire one who has a gift with words, who can tell a vivid story or put an idea across so

61 MODERN JAPANESE HAIKU 47 that we understand it. The haiku, due to its brevity, is at once demanding and not quite overwhelming in its challenges. We all can think of ourselves as occasionally having the kind of sudden awareness that makes for a haiku moment, and can also think of ourselves as being able to make a few words fit together so that others might share in that moment. Sharing is one of the things we want most in life, to give something of ourselves to others, so that they might accept us and our experiences and perceptions as important. The haiku, while short, is long enough to give others an impression of who we are, some piece of the story of our lives. Yet it does not go on forever, like a self-indulgent autobiography, without getting to the point. And it leaves room for a response, so the sharing can become mutual. Haiku poets, like any other poets, quickly try to find their own poems when they appear in print. But most haiku poets also read poems by other poets writing on the same subjects they have written about, for the fun of finding out how others responded to such-and-such an event, to the season, to the sights along some route. Since Basho's Narrow Roads to the Interior thousands of poets have visited one or more of the places he visited and wrote of, to try the landscape or seascape out on their own eyes, and to try their hands at capturing some new essence of the place that Basho may have missed or, often enough, simply to say to the spirit of a poet who lived three hundred years ago, "Yes, I have been here too, and found it as you said."

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63 4 Early Haiku in the West HAIKAI AND HOKKU Haiku in the West begins at the beginning of the twentieth century, with attempts to write haiku in French during a visit to Japan by Julien Vocance, Paul-Louis Couchoud, and others. They published a book of their efforts in Then a decent anthology of Japanese literature in French translation by Michel Revon was published at Paris in Revon called the hokku of Basho "haikai", which became the term most often used in French and Spanish for the first half of the century. But not until World War I did haiku really begin to become an indigenous Western phenomenon. In the trenches of 1915 Julien Vocance wrote a series of haikai called <&Cent Visions de Guerre^ ("One Hundred Visions of War"). While many of his "Visions" are rather grandiose and sentimental, some are sharply focused and come close to hitting the haiku nail on the head: 49

64 50 Haiku Old and New Sur son chariot mal graiste, On its badly greased wagon L'obus tris haul, pas pressi, The shell very high, unhurried, Au-dessus de nous a passe*. Above us has passed. Dans sa flanelle Ses ongles vont, picorant Les petites betes. Into his flannels His fingernails go, picking The little beasts. The first is weakened by an unimpressive metaphor in its opening line, but the second accurately portrays a trench-mate's search for the little creatures that would feed on him. In 1920 haikai by a dozen poets appeared in the Nouvelle revue frangaise, one of France's leading literary magazines, and the 1920's saw many haikai in French books and magazines. Here are some samples: Un trou d'obus Dans son eau A garde tout le ciel. A shell hole In its water Held the whole sky. Maurice Betz De'monte's apris la fete Dismounted after the festivities Les petits chevaux de bois The little wooden horses Se serrent I'un contre I'autre. Crowd against one another. Le ciel noir, Black sky, Les nez rouges, Red noses, Et la neige. And snow. Le train arrivait; j'avais un baiser tout prit: le train est parti... Rene Maublanc Rene* Maublanc The train was coming; I had a kiss all ready: the train left... Jean Baucomont

65 EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 51 Meanwhile, Basil Hall Chamberlain's second edition of Japanese Poetry, including his new essay "Basho and the Japanese Poetical Epigram", was published in London and Japan at the end of (An earlier edition, without mention of haiku, had come out in 1880.) And Lafcadio Hearn's translations of hokku and tanka scattered through his many books on Japan were collected and published as Japanese Lyrics (Boston, 1915). Considering the distance between almost all of Western poetry and these traditional Japanese modes, Revon, Chamberlain, and Heam acquitted themselves well. These, and a few other books, less well executed, provided French, Spanish, and English-language poets with a first look at Japanese haiku, which most of the British and North American poets called hokku, after Chamberlain. Six months after Poetry magazine began, in the issue of April 1913, Ezra Pound's now famous "In a Station of the Metro" appeared. This may be the first published hokku in English. The poem underwent at least two later revisions, which are discussed in Chapter 9, The Craft of Haiku.* And Pound had four or five other hokku published in his book Lustra of 1916, along with the Metro poem. Other poets followed Pound's lead. In dated order, we have: from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. Wallace Stevens (publ. 1917) *Pound was apparently ready for hokku. In the San Trovaso Notebook, a copybook in which he recorded poems written in 1908 in Venice, he had written the following, probably before he had heard of hokku: "I have felt the lithe wind/ blowing/ under one's fingers/ sinuous."

66 52 Haiku Old and New Lines Leaves are grey-green, The glass broken bright green. William Carlos Williams (1919) Autumn Haze Is it a dragonfly or a maple leaf That settles softly down upon the water? Amy Lowell (1919) The twigs tinge the winter sky brown. Charles Reznikoff (1920) All of the sections of Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" are short, imagistic. After this, Stevens would work at clothing his thoughts in images, rather than at developing his thoughts from images. William Carlos Williams's poem "Lines" is almost worthy of Shiki, and certainly looks forward to longer work Williams would do in the early 1920s and thereafter; one thinks immediately of his poem "Between Walls". Amy Lowell wrote a few hokku that show the direct influence of specific Japanese models. For example, her poem "Peace", that runs "Perched upon the muzzle of a cannon/ A yellow butterfly is slowly opening and shutting its wings." is obviously an allusive variation on Buson's "Perched upon the temple-bell, the butterfly sleeps!" (Lafcadio Hearn's translation). However, Lowell's "Autumn Haze" resembles none of the extant translations; and the title asks us to believe that it was based on actual experience. I would vote "Autumn Haze" one of the best hokku by a selfstyled Imagist, though Lowell would try more later, less successfully.

67 EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 53 Though Charles Reznikoff was known at that time only to a few poets and not to the reading public, he has become increasingly important. And he continued to apply the haiku principle of getting down exactly the thing seen to many different kinds of material throughout his life, only occasionally adding his own pointed comments, as in this perfect senryu (see Chapter 15, Beyond Haiku), published in 1969: Horsefly, on the window of the automobile agency: you're out of business now. Other poets who were to grow in importance in Europe and Latin America published what they called haikai. These are from a group of eleven, titled <&Pour Vivre Iri» ("To Live Here", 1920), by Paul Eluard: A moitie petite, La petite Monte'e sur un banc. Half-little, The little girl Set on a bench. line plume donne au chapeau A feather gives to the hat Un air de ttgtrete An air of frivolity La chiminie fume. The chimney smokes. These, and the other sections of "To Live Here", demonstrate the combination of image and humor that pervaded the haikai before Basho, though today they seem more like senryu. It is the vividness of such images, and the ideal turn of phrase in which to catch them, that appealed to European and American minds in the period between the world wars. One such mind was that of Jose Juan Tablada, a Mexican poet and diplomat who visited Japan in 1900 and was much impressed with its art and poetry, but seems to have discovered the haikai in Paris during 1911 and In 1919 his book Un Dia... poemas sinte'ticos came out, consisting entirely of haikai except for a short verse prologue. Many of the poems in Un Dia are more

68 54 Haiku Old and New expressions than presentations; Tablada uses vivid metaphors to capture some essential characteristic of an animal or object in general, rather than to present us with a particular example of that animal or object in the here and now. But even some of Tablada's frankly metaphorical pieces approach the ecstasy of experience that joins an especially Spanish quality to the emotionalism of some Japanese haiku. For example, probably Tablada's most famous poem from Un Dia, with a translation by Mark Cramer: El Satiz Tierno satiz casi oro, casi dmbar, casi luz... The Willow Tender willow almost gold, almost amber, almost light... Tablada was a major figure in modernismo, the shift to the new that went on in all the arts with the growing twentieth century. For the rest of his life, Tablada wrote haikai and concrete, or visual, poems, as well as longer free-verse poems. One concrete poem by Tablada, written in French, has a special haiku touch. The page shows four pairs of footprints, as if made by a small bird hopping about, and the text reads: Oiseau Void ses petites pattes le chant c'est envois... Bird See its little feet the song has flown... This appears to be the beginning of an interaction between haiku and concrete poetry that continues today in the West. Tablada wrote haikai throughout his life, and influenced a number of other Spanish and Hispanic poets to do likewise. Here is one of his later haikai:

69 Looping the Loop Vesperal perspective en torno de la luna hace un "looping the loop" la golondrina. EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 55 Looping the Loop Evening perspective: around the moon making a loop-the-loop, the swallow. Many poets writing in Spanish have written haikai. Much of the work, however, wanders from the path of haiku into cute metaphors that have their basis in linguistic agility, rather than genuine experience. These two are among the best of the Spanish-language haiku I have seen in surveying materials through the 1940s; both are from the 1920's or earlier: Canta, canta, canta, junto a su tomate, el grillo en su jaula. Sings, sings, sings, next to his tomato, the cricket in its cage. Antonio Machado Pdjaro muerto: Dead bird: {que* agonfa de plumas such an agony of feathers en el silencio! in the silence! Juan Jose" Domenchina Machado, in particular, made the haikai his own, and incorporated it into several sequences written in the twenties. We will encounter more of his work in Chapter 15, Beyond Haiku. In the meantime, the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke made his first attempt at a thing he called haikai, in French in September 1920; it failed as haikai and as poetry. His second go at it, in December of the same year, was in German, and came closer to the mark, although very wordy: Kleine Motten taumeln schauernd quer aus dem Bucks; sie sterben heute Abend und werden nie wissen, dab es nicht 'Frillingwar.

70 5- Hafou Old and New Little moths reel, shuddering, out of the boxwood; they'll die this evening and never be the wiser, that it is not spring. This might qualify as an extended haiku, but the phrase "never be the wiser" seems superfluous. Finally, in French, the year he died (1926) Rilke managed a decent haikai that has a good deal of the spirit of senryu in it: Entre ses vingt fards Among her twenty rouges elle cherche un pot plein: she searches for a full pot: devenue pierre. turned to stone. By 1929 the Greek poet George Seferis had found haikai, as his posthumously published diaries reveal. Here are a few of the sixteen haikai in his Collected Poems, in translations prepared for this book by Manya Bean: Era? 6 <*T^ XC(JLVTJ (*6vo (xia ardcxa xpaal xal optjvei 6 ijxioc. Zx&t xfjno XQG Afovcrclov "A$eie<; xap xxec T' ayaxfiaxa yupiooiv err' &XXo jxouaeto. Drip in the lake only one drop of wine and the sun goes out. In the Museum Garden Empty chairs the statues returned to the other museum. 6 x<<>piafx& dbtxcovci xal xufxax^ei. lpa9et^* TO {icxavt Xty^aTE^e ^ OaXaaaac 7cX7]6a(veu Night, the wind separation spreads and billows. You write; the ink lessened the sea increases.

71 EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 57 The first of these is a bit surreal to qualify as a haiku, but would probably arouse interest among some Japanese haiku poets. The second seems at first glance good, but prosaic. Then the ambiguity sets in. Did the statues return under their own steam? Where is the "other" museum? A museum garden is as good a place to "people-watch" as any. Both of the last two poems seem metaphorical in intent; the sea of the last in particular, to me, suggests the "sea of words" the growing mass of written words that characterizes civilization. Among other noteworthy developments before World War II cut off commerce with Japan, Georges Bonneau published a series of books with his decent translations into French from Japanese poetry, including Le Haiku, in the mid-1930s. Harold G. Henderson's English translations of Japanese haiku came out in a book called The Bamboo Broom in The Ecuadorian poet Jorge Carrera Andrade appended a group of twenty Japanese haiku in his Spanish translations to a collection of his short epigrams called Microgrammas, published in Tokyo in And then the war obliterated cultural exchanges. HAIKU AND ZEN When the distress of World War II began at last to clear, two important interpreters of haiku to the West found themselves in Tokyo. Harold G. Henderson was on the staff of the American occupation forces. And R. H. Blyth, a Britisher recently released from a Japanese internment camp where he had spent part of the war, was invited to tutor the Crown Prince. Each was responsible for a major jump in the movement of haiku to the Western hemisphere. Blyth had studied with a Zen master for some time. He came to believe that Zen Buddhism was the dominant influence on the traditional Japanese arts, particularly haiku. During the 1940s he

72 58 Haiku Old and New began publishing a succession of books on Zen, haiku, and related topics. His Haiku: Volume I, was the first of four volumes published between 1949 and 1952 under the title Haiku. In each of these books several hundred poems were given, with Blyth's sometimes brilliant, sometimes misleading translations, plus his very Zen-full comments on them. These books were sold at foreign language bookstores throughout East Asia and in the United States. Copies reached Europe. And a new interest in Japanese haiku began to grow among poets of the immediate post-world War II generation. The so-called "San Francisco poets" and the "Beat poets" from the New York area, in particular, remembered the experimental hokku of the Imagists. Gary Snyder, already a student of Taoist and Zen philosophy, began writing haiku and short hokku-like pieces in his diary for 1952, published in Earth House Hold. Two samples: This morning: floating face down in the water bucket a drowned mouse. leaning in the doorway whistling a chipmunk popped out listening Allen Ginsberg, a main figure in the New York group, spent a good deal of time in California. An entry in his journal for the mid-1950s reads "Haiku composed in the backyard cottage at... Berkeley 1955, while reading R. H. Blyth's 4 volumes Haiku"; here are three samples: Looking over my shoulder my behind was covered with cherry blossoms.

73 EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 59 Winter Haiku I didn't know the names of the flowers now my garden is gone. Lying on my side in the void: The breath in my nose. While the last one surely has what Zen masters laughingly call "the stink of Zen", the others have the humor and sense of the physical that pervades haiku. Ginsberg's diary entry also has some advice to himself on writing haiku, including: Haiku = objective images written down outside mind the result is inevitable mind sensation of relations. Never try to write of relations themselves, just the images which are all that can be written down on the subject... Soon Jack Kerouac would also write "haikus",* like these: Birds singing in the dark Rainy dawn. Useless, useless, the heavy rain Driving into the sea. *While the "Beat poets" and others have anglicized the plural of haiku to haikus, most purists, myself included, retain the Japanese style, which makes no distinction between singular and plural, as in the English words sheep, deer, etc.

74 60 Haiku Old and New The first of these seems a perfect evocation one awakens, wondering why the birds are singing while it is still dark outside. Then the underlying sound of the rain comes through, with the just perceptible greyness of dawn on the horizon. The second, with perhaps also a slight stink of Zen, still reminds me of one of Basho's famous pieces that has a similar mood: samidare o atsumete hayashi mogami-gawa June rains gathering, speeding Mogami River Meanwhile, Mexican poet Octavio Paz was writing his own very short poems, having visited India and Japan in I feel these to be haiku, though I do not know whether Paz takes them that way: El dia abre la mano Tres nubes Y estas pocas palabras. Nifto y trompo Cada vez que lo lanza cae, justo, en el centro del mundo. Ante la puerta Gentes, palabras, gentes. Dude un instante: la luna arriba, sola. The day opens its hand Three clouds And these few words. Boy and Top Each time he flings it it falls, just, in the center of the world. Before the Door People, words, people. I hesitated a moment: the moon above, alone. The first of these, published in 1952, echoes Shakespeare's "rosyfingered dawn", but has surreal overtones, almost like a painting by Magritte. The second, except for one word, seems simply a portrayal of the concentration a child gives a plaything. The youngster stares fixedly at the spinning top, which becomes the center of all existence for him. But that "just" (the pun works in

75 EARLY HAIKU IN THE WEST 61 Spanish, too) and the extra comma give the poem a little extra force, making it a touch didactic. Perhaps there, where nothing operates but the laws of physics, is true balance, true justice. The last of the three poems echoes a famous haiku by Boncho (various surnames; d. 1714): fuku kaze no aite ya sora ni tsuki hitotsu the blowing wind's buddy... in the sky a single moon Paz would go on to publish in 1957 a complete Spanish translation of Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior, in collaboration with Eikichi Hayashiya also saw the publication of Kenneth Yasuda's The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English. Yasuda's book, unlike Blyth's volumes on the subject, quotes a good deal of Japanese scholarship on the haiku, and hardly mentions Zen the word appears four times in some two hundred thirty pages. The Paz translation and Yasuda's technical manual were but the harbingers, rising with a wave still building toward its crest.

76

77 5 The Haiku Movement in English BEGINNINGS In 1958 three books appeared that would capitalize on growing American interest in haiku, and expand it further. In Japan the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai published Haikai and Haiku, presenting translations from the works of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki, plus a sample haikai-no-renga, part of Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior, and one of Buson's longer pieces in mixed haiku, free verse, and Chinese. The book is generally what one would expect from a committee of scholars: useful appendices on the terminology of Japanese literary criticism and season words, and translations that are relatively accurate to the sense of the poems, but uninspired. At about the same time Jack Kerouac's most widely read novel, The Dharma Bums, and Harold G. Henderson's updated 63

78 64 Haiku Old and New version of his book from the 1930s, now called An Introduction to Haiku, arrived in American bookstores. Kerouac's book became the bible to a whole generation of American youth. In the opening fifty pages it introduces the reader to "Japhy Ryder", a character based on Gary Snyder. Japhy writes haiku and suddenly so do a lot of other people. He also reads, among other things, "the complete works of D. T. Suzuki and a fine quadruple-volume edition of Japanese haikus." No doubt the books of R. H. Blyth. Several of the poets I know first discovered the haiku in Kerouac's novel. Meanwhile, many other people, particularly teachers, were finding Henderson's Introduction an entree to haiku. Although Henderson's translations have titles and end-rime, features normally absent from Japanese haiku, his versions are reasonably accurate and the riming much more skillfully done than some of the atrocities committed on haiku in the early decades of the century. He also provided readers with word-for-word trots of the originals. Unfortunately, he left out the modern haiku which he had included in his earlier book. And he made little or no mention of renga, haibun, senryu, or haiku sequences. Despite these limitations, Henderson's book became quite popular. The combined effects of Kerouac's and Henderson's books started hundreds of Americans writing haiku. Already existing writers' clubs took up haiku, in much the same way as the Imagists had in London more than forty years earlier. Poets around the world who could read English, or who read The Dharma Bums in translation, took up haiku as a result of one or the other of these books. One of the more interesting examples of this phenomenon is a section toward the end of Dag HammarskjSid's journal, Vdgmttrken, published in Well over a hundred seventeen-syllable poems occupy the entries for August 1959 through December Translated into English by W. H. Auden and Leif SjGberg as Markings, the book had a wide sale in England and

79 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 65 America. Here are a few of its haiku, in new translations: Snti i april. Kardinalen sd'kt skydd i den vita Forsythian. Cikadorna skrek, luften glddde fdrbritnd deras sista afton. Snow in April. The cardinal sought shelter in that white forsythia. The cicadas shrieked, the glowing air burnt up their last evening. Annu l&ngt frdn stranden Now far from the strand lekte havets friskhet the sea's freshness played / bronsblanka Id'v. in bright bronze leaves. While these are haiku, though in the past tense (haiku normally are in the present, or the present perfect), most of Hammarskj old's seventeen-sy liable poems are philosophical aphorisms and the like, not haiku. The Afro-American novelist Richard Wright had studied R. H. Blyth's books, and wrote several hundred haiku during the last year and a half or so of his life. He died in 1960 in Paris, leaving behind a manuscript with these: Coming from the woods A bull has a lilac sprig Dangling from a horn Just enough of rain To bring the smell of silk From umbrellas And in 1961 an American poet who fully understood the juxtaposition of images that occurs in many haiku, and who had studied the poetry of William Carlos Williams and other streamliners of the language, published his first book in New York City.

80 66 Haiku Old and New These are from Cor van den Heuvel's Sun in Skull: in the toy pail at low tide floats the still ferris wheel a black model-t ford rounds the white curve of the heron's wing snow on the saddle-bags sun in skull The freshness of van den Heuvel's movie and amusement park images, and his spare handling of the language, were not to be equalled in haiku by other Americans until almost a decade later. HAIKU MAGAZINES IN ENGLISH In 1963, five years after the publication of Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and Henderson's Introduction to Haiku, the first of many magazines devoted to English-language haiku began publishing. There is not space here to go into a detailed history of Englishlanguage haiku magazines. Rather, I will give a brief sketch of the major ones, with their years and places of publication, the editors' names, and a few examples from their pages. In each case I have picked poets whose work is well known to the haiku community, through publication in both anthologies and individual books of their own work. A forthcoming history of the haiku in English, and a book by each of the authors represented, are listed in Resources at the end of the handbook. American Haiku (Platteville, Wisconsin; ) was started by James Bull and Donald Eulert. As the first all-haiku magazine in English (in any Western language, I believe), it established a number of trends later magazines would take up. Its first few

81 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 67 issues contained work that was quite free-form; later, under and after Clement Hoyt's editorship, it would prefer haiku written in what has been called the "five-seven-five form". And it introduced many haiku poets to a broader readership. Among them: An evening cricket; the trout pond reflects the glint of a falling star. Robert Spiess As the sun sets, the old fisherman sorts out the fish he can sell. Sydell Rosenberg Bass picking bugs off the moon! Nicholas A. Virgilio The water deepens following the dark canoe a pair of muskrats. O Mabelsson Southerd Only scattered stars, Not a breath of air till the moon wakens clusters only a water bug mars of saguaro flowers. the pine's reflection. Foster Jewell Marjory Bates Pratt Haiku (Toronto; / Paterson, New Jersey; ) was begun by Eric W. Amann, who wished to stress the sources of haiku in Zen consciousness, a la R. H. Blyth and the works of Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki, and so on. Amann concentrated on the content of haiku and the spareness of its language, calling it (after Watts) "the wordless poem". He sought out new translations from Japanese, as well as from other European languages in which poets had written haiku, and published the first Englishlanguage renga, haibun, and haiku sequences. He also published experiments in "concrete haiku" (visual poems). Many of the best haiku poets of the 1970s and 1980s frequented Haiku's pages: September rains, gout patients sit in the waiting room. Eric W. Amann On this still hot day, only the sound of soft grass in the beaks of ducks. Claire Pratt

82 68 Haiku Old and New Listening... After a while I take up my axe again. Rod Willmot fog moves through the burned out house: gently Jack Cain red flipped out Deep into this world chicken lung of Monet water lilies... in a cold white sink no sound. Anita Virgil cleaning whelks the sound of the knife. Larry Wiggin GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG RRRRRRESRRRRRRRRRRRRRR AAAAAKSNAAAAAAAASNAAAA SSNSKESSKESSSSSSNAKESS SSAKESSSESNSSSSSAKESSS GGGGGGGGGNAKGGGAKEGGGG RRRRRRRRRRKESRAKERRRRR AAAAAAAAAAASNAKEAAAAAA SSSSSSSSSSSSAKESSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Elizabeth Searle Lamb New Year's Day taking a load to the junkyard. John Wills Larry Gates This last, one of the series of "test patterns" by Gates, has become a classic of concrete haiku. Did you find the snake in the grass? In 1971 Amann turned the editorship of his magazine over to me, and I continued publishing these poets along with Michael McClintock, Cor van den Heuvel, and many others, under the title Haiku Magazine (the simple title Haiku had been used for so many books it was becoming very confusing). Two more by poets

83 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 69 whom Amann and I both published: In the hook of a wave the tide Virginia Brady Young buzzz slap buzzz Alan Pizzarelli Haiku West (Forest Hills, New York; ) was edited by Leroy Kanterman. He welcomed many of the poets formerly featured in American Haiku. In 1968 Kanterman also helped Harold G. Henderson to form The Haiku Society of America in New York City. In its early years such poets as Nicholas A. Virgilio, Elizabeth Searle Lamb, L. A. Davidson, Virginia Brady Young, Alan Pizzarelli, Anita Virgil and myself shared our poems and our thoughts on haiku at the Society's monthly meetings. Minutes were distributed to a growing international membership. In 1971 Cor van den Heuvel would first make contact with the "haiku movement" by attending one of these meetings. And the Society sponsored annual readings and lectures, bringing such translators as Cid Corman, Donald Keene, and Hiroaki Sato, the Japanese scholar Yamamoto Kenkichi, and the haiku poet Mori Sumio to New York to address the members and the public. For some time Haiku West, under Kanterman's editorship, was the official magazine of the Society. Two poems from its pages: Steady fall of rain... and the scent of lilacs so strong it becomes a taste Gustave Keyser On the gray church wall, the shadow of a candle... shadow of its smoke. L. A. Davidson Haiku Highlights and Other Short Poems (Kanona, New York; ), edited by Jean Calkins, catered to writers of small fixed forms. The magazine published hundreds of poems that resembled haiku in form only. But Calkins published parts of letters from readers, and by 1969 began attracting a few of the better

84 70 Haiku Old and New American haiku poets to write letters spelling out their thoughts. She soon invited their articles, and pieces by McClintock, Virgil, Young, and myself began to have an effect; new poets were learning and established poets were contributing to Haiku Highlights. Two of the latter: rain... washing away my winter footprints A boy wading watching a dark snake winding...,, out of the river. Joyce Webb James Tipton Modern Haiku (Los Angeles, California, later Madison, Wisconsin; 1969-continuing), founded by Kay Titus Mormino, has published decent work by poets of all schools, avoiding the extremes. A particularly useful feature was a column called "Random Notes from an Anonymous Haiku-Watcher", which gave news of haiku publications and activities that went unnoticed elsewhere. These two examples give an idea of the magazine's range in its early years: the long night of the mannequins. snow falling Martin Shea Spring moon; ferns uncurling between the river rocks. Lorraine Ellis Harr Haiku Byways (later just Byways; London, England and other locations; ) was edited by Gerry Loose, whose haiku background was similar to that of Amann. In addition to several American and Canadian poets already mentioned, he published a number of British poets. One each by three of the best: caught out in the snow for a moment, I seem to recognize something in the dog's eyes Bill Wyatt (also known as Zengetsu Kembo)

85 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 71 a small ceremony lifting stakes now thinner than my trees come of age Dee Evetts white butterfly, blue cabbage the allotment hut sags in noonday heat Chris Torrance Both Wyatt and Torrance have haiku in the Penguin anthology Children of Albion, edited by Michael Horovitz and published in England in HAIKU MAGAZINES: THE SECOND WAVE By the mid-1970s a number of smaller magazines were publishing haiku regularly. Cor van den Heuvel, who had written brilliant haiku since 1961, discovered this activity in 1971, and immediately began a careful reading of all the haiku materials he could find. As he went he made note of poems he particularly liked. His work resulted in the publication of The Haiku Anthology: English Language Haiku by Contemporary American and Canadian Poets in The several other anthologies of haiku published before and since were all lovingly produced in short press runs. The Haiku Anthology was a trade paperback from Doubleday, and enjoyed wide distribution. Interest in haiku grew, and several new readers and poets became involved in the haiku magazines. Most of the magazines mentioned above and in the anthology have since ceased publication or moved, but new magazines came to the fore. Tweed (Murwillumbah, New South Wales, Australia; ) was started by Janice M. Bostok, publishing mainly haiku, much of it by North American poets already mentioned. Here are samples of her own work, that of another Australian, and one by

86 72 Haiku Old and New Gerry Loose, who published very little of his work in his own magazine: Pregnant again... the fluttering of moths against the window Janice M. Bostok each grassleaf distinct before the storm Gerry Loose straightening up crow disappearing Brian Joyce With the end of 1972 Haiku Highlights went out of existence, but really changed editors and names to Dragonfly (Portland, Oregon; 1973-continuing), under the guidance of Lorraine Ellis Harr. Two samples: The white spider whiter still in the lightning's flash Geraldine C. Little The silence of the bat's wings this cold night. David Lloyd High/Coo (Battle Ground, Indiana; ), under the editorship of Randy and Shirley Brooks, would lead the way to new poets and innovations in format during the late 1970s. In addition to haiku, the magazine featured sequences and tanka. And High/ Coo Press began a series of small pamphlets by individual authors which were sent to subscribers. The pamphlet series con-

87 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 73 tinues today. Here are pieces by some of the poets who became prominent in large part through the Brooks's efforts, from their magazine and the pamphlet series (all spaced as originally printed): Stalking the cricket: the boy's slow squat before each jump a diver brings up the body the rain begins Ruth Yarrow LeRoy Gorman turning in bed our backs face Adele Kenny late afternoon: cattle lie in billboard shade Randy Brooks 1 1 BillPauly The last of these is another variety of concrete haiku, so-called, in which the typewriter becomes the tool of a visual artist, divorced from words completely. Do you see the twitch in the tail of the cat on the fence? Cicada (Toronto, Canada; ), edited by Eric W. Amann, picked up where Haiku Magazine had left off. In addition to the range of the old magazine, Amann added tanka and helped promote the writing of so-called "one-line haiku", a variety inspired by the one-column format of the traditional haiku in Japanese, and by the one-line translations of Japanese haiku into

88 74 Haiku Old and New English by Hiroaki Sato. Many of these poets also appeared in other magazines, notably High/Coo and its pamphlet series: after Beethoven he gets the furnace roaring Raymond Roseliep Wading out her shadow ripples back to shore Betty Drevniok After our quarrel, a full moon one fly everywhere the heat Margaret Saunders Passport check: my shadow waits across the border Marlene Mountain George Swede somewhere her voice in the night whispering leaves empty shopping mall raintly the nightsweeper's broom Michael Dudley Clarence Matsuo-Allard spring rain in this new mud the worm's pink skin Fenny Harter Frogpond (originally called HSA Frogpond; New York City; 1978-continuing) was established by the Haiku Society of America when it became apparent that the Society was not really providing adequate services to the many members unable to reach monthly meetings in New York. Now the Society meets a few times each year, putting on one annual program at Japan House in New York, and an annual reading at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in April. The magazine, presently under the editorship of Elizabeth Searle Lamb, tries to stay on top of the current American haiku scene and publishes occasional news of haiku activity outside the U.S. Haiku by members, renga, and critical articles

89 THE HAIKU MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 75 make up its usual contents. As the membership spans a wide variety of poets, many different kinds of haiku appear in Frogpond's pages. Two samples: lightning flash dog on a chain the flick of high beams TT, _,, out of the dark roadside ditch Hal Roth.. leaps a tall grass clump Paul O. Williams In 1979 a small press in Toronto brought out George Swede's Canadian Haiku Anthology. As the back cover says, "Canada has some of the finest haiku poets in the world." Swede includes poems by Amann, Brickley, Drevniok, Dudley, Faiers, Gorman, Pratt, Saunders, Swede, and Willmot, all represented here, and several others. Although not too many people outside of the haiku community in North America know about it, the Canadian Haiku Anthology is a good sampling of these poets' work, much of it not published anywhere else. Wind Chimes (Glen Burnie, Maryland; 1981-continuing), edited by Hal Roth, is the latest entry among the better magazines that seem destined to last a while, as of this writing. It has featured some interesting translations, and is crowded with work of every school of haiku poets writing in English. A pair of examples: Still damp earth the unglazed bowl Peggy Willis Lyles Twilight from field to tree a crow Marion J. Richardson Modern Haiku, begun in 1969 (see above), was turned over to Robert Spiess by its founder, Kay Titus Mormino, in As in the past, the magazine publishes a variety of poets, no particular

90 76 Haiku Old and New school predominating. The "Haiku-Watcher" has been replaced by Spiess's "Speculations", a series of random observations on writing haiku. Modern Haiku is especially valuable for its book reviews, of which it probably publishes more than any other haiku magazine. Two of the newer poets whose poems appear in recent issues: the ledger blurs... through the half-closed blinds autumn moon Chuck Brickley Shiva all those hands all those pigeons Alexis Rotella The "haiku movement" or the "haiku community" in English is the creation of the magazines that have published these and hundreds of other poets. Here I have sampled only the more prominent magazines; many others have come and gone after one, two, or a few issues, or publish haphazardly, but each has contributed some special flavor to the whole. They have names like Bonsai, New World Haiku, Seer Ox, The Blue Print, Leanfrog, Sun-Lotus Haiku, Muse Pie, Brussels Sprout, and even Haiku Spotlight, a weekly postcard of several haiku written in English and German, published in Japan for a year and a half some time ago. Without these magazines, and the dozens of small publishers who have brought out a total of well over three hundred individual books and pamphlets of haiku during the past twenty years, there would hardly be a haiku in English, beyond the occasional experiments of a few major authors and classroom teachers. (See Resources, "English-Language Haiku: Individual Authors", at the end of the handbook for a list of books, mostly by the poets represented in this chapter.)

91 Haiku Around the World. NEW EUROPEAN HAIKU In the last few years the haiku has spread more and more rapidly around the world. Today there are enough haiku poets in Yugoslavia and Holland to support handsome quarterly magazines in Serbo-Croatian and Dutch, and the German haiku movement has taken over several pages of a magazine there. The post-world War II revival of haiku on the European continent seems to have begun with the German novelist Imma von Bodmershof (d. 1982). Two of the following are from her 1962 book Haiku, and the third is a later revision. All have been translated with the help of Petra Engelbert: Im grilnen Wasser das griine Fischlein nur sein Schatten verrut es. Der grofie Flufischweigt manchmal nur Wnt es leise tief unter dem Eis. In green water the little green fish only his shadow betrays him. The great river Is silent only sometimes it sounds quietly deep under the ice. 77

92 78 Haiku Old and New Grttber im Nebel Graves in the fog leere Nester die Schwalben empty nests the swallows kreisen im Siiden circle in the south. Bodmershof inspired other Germans to take up haiku, and lived to see her poems published in North America and Japan. Haiku: Casopis za haiku poeziju ("Haiku: Magazine of Haiku Poetry"; Varazdin, Jugoslavia; ?), edited by a committee, published articles on Ezra Pound, Jack Kerouac, and R. H. Blyth, along with a large selection of haiku and sequences, in its first issue. Subsequent issues include translations from the writings of Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Imma von Bodmershof, and Harold G. Henderson, as well as Japanese poets. The magazine has the same breadth as Amann's Haiku and Cicada; translations from its pages have appeared in Cicada and Frogpond. Yugoslavian haiku vary from classical to modern in tone, as these examples demonstrate, translated with the help of Nina Zivancevic: Ispod meseca Under the moon tek olistala vrba just the little willow leaves i sama svetli. shedding their own light. Aleksandar Nejgebauer Dranuja kola po poljskom putu iito se trese. The wagon rattles on the road by the field the grain shakes. Katarina PSak Pod kopitima Under the hooves spomenika kralju of the king's memorial dvadesetak golubova twenty pigeons. Vladimir DevidS

93 HAIKU AROUND THE WORLD 79 The Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) enjoy a relationship much like that between the United States and English-speaking Canada, in that poets writing in the same language communicate freely across borders and join together in many activities. Thus the Haiku Kring Nederland ("Haiku Circle of Holland") and the Haikoe Centrum Vlaanderen ("Haiku Center of Flanders") work together to publish Vuursteen: Hjdschrift voor haiku, senryu en tanka ("Flint: Magazine for..."; Baarn, Nederland; 1981-continuing). The magazine publishes haiku and related poems and articles by Dutch-speaking poets, along with pieces on traditional and contemporary Japanese poems. Three from the Dutch, translations made with the assistance of Wanda Reumer, Director of the Haiku Kring Nederland: een duivepaar a pair of pigeons in een mist van lenteregen in a mist of spring rain schouder aan schouder shoulder to shoulder Anton Gerits de asters bloeien. the aster blossoms. de dauwdruppels schitteren the glittering of dew drops tot na de middag. 'til after noontime. Karel Hellemans Over het weiland Across the meadow traag-bewegende tongen the slow moving tongues grazende koeien. of grazing cows. Piet Zanboer Soon after its founding, apropos (Lauingen, West Germany; 1980-continuing) established a section in each issue devoted to the haiku in German. Sabine Sommerkamp, editor of the section, includes articles on haiku poems and events, as well as a selection of work by German haiku poets. Volker Schubert helped me

94 80 Haiku Old and New translate these poems by a few of the poets appearing in apropos: Fern nun die Berge. Far now the mountains. Wie sind ihre Linien How their lines are einfach geworden! become simple! Hajo Jappe Mein GUrtchen verkauft Sold my garden wie anders klingt auf einmal now how different they sound der Vo'gel Gesang! the bird's songs! Sabine Sommerkamp auf kahlem acker on a bare field die verrostete egge the rusted harrow weifiglitzernd bereift frosted glittering white Use Hensel ENGLISH IS NOT THE ONLY AMERICAN TONGUE In addition to the new interest in haiku in Yugoslavia, Holland and Flanders, and Germany, some new Spanish and Frenchspeaking poets of the Americas have taken up haiku recently. One or another of the North American haiku magazines has published a few poems by each of the following three poets during the last several years. Ana Rosa Nunez, a Cuban expatriate, published a book of haiku in Here is an example from Escamas del Caribe ("Fish Scales from the Caribbean"), translated with the help of Merlin Marie depauw: Ha vuelto del cansancio Returned from weariness Mientras la ola While the wave Se aleja despacio. Recedes slowly.

95 HAIKU AROUND THE WORLD 81 Maria Luisa Mufioz, a retired professor of music at the University of Puerto Rico, includes this poem in her collection Miniaturas (1982), and was kind enough to help me with the translation: Duermen las aves, The birds sleep, la noche silenciosa the night silent baja del cielo. descends from the sky. Andre Duhaime, whose haikus d'ici ("haiku from here") was published in 1981 in Quebec, had this poem in the final issue of Cicada: une dent en or a tooth of gold en sortant de chez le dentiste going out of the dentist's office les feuilles tombent the leaves fall Canada has figured strongly, as we have seen, in the growth of an English-language haiku. Now Andre Duhaime and coeditor Dorothy Howard have assembled a book that should be a major leap forward in the spread of haiku. To be published in 1985, twenty-five years after Henderson's Introduction and a decade after van den Heuvel's first Anthology (another is in the works as of this writing), we have Haiku: anthologie canadienne/ Canadian anthology. This second Canadian anthology features a good selection of work by each of over forty poets, and has two unique features. First, it is entirely bilingual; all works appear in both their original languages and in French or English translations. Although the English-writing poets outnumber the French by about three to one, several of the French selections are quite striking. Second, it includes a number of haiku by Japanese-Canadians who write in Japanese, probably a first in North American publishing. These have been translated into both French and English, making the book in part trilingual. Haiku: anthologie canadienne includes work from over a twenty-year span, a good deal of it previously unpublished, in

96 82 Haiku Old and New everything from formalist five-seven-five's to concrete haiku. Though Canada, and particularly the group of poets who have been encouraged by Eric W. Amann's Haiku and Cicada, has been a strong source of energy in the growth of English-language haiku, many of the poets represented in this anthology were new to me. I have picked a few poems by poets not yet encountered in this handbook, and present them here in the format used in the anthologie. The left-hand poem is in the original language; that on the right is the translation by Duhaime and Howard: whale spray! a shaft of sunlight in the bay une baleine souffle! un jet de soleil dans la baie Nick Avis Des corneilles craillent Cawing crows dans un orme desse'che' in a dried-out elm dentelle du jour lace of light moment of birth new shadow Alphonse Picke naissance nouvelle ombre Pique-nique. La fourmi sur la nappe quadrilue disparatt dans un carreau noir. Picnic. The ant on the chequered tablecloth disappears into a black square. Jocelyne Villeneuve Ruby Spriggs As of this writing, the translations of the Japanese haiku to be included in anthologie canadienne are not complete, so I am unable to inclucle any of them here

97 HAIKU AROUND THE WORLD 83 INTERNATIONAL HAIKU Today a new possibility for haiku presents itself. For some time now various European language publications in Japan have featured haiku in English, German, and so on usually written by Westerners living in Japan. But only in the last few years has the haiku community in Japan begun to take notice of overseas efforts in the genre. The Itadori group (see the end of Chapter 3) led the way, developing a close relationship with a number of German haiku poets centered around Imma von Bodmershof. A few private publishers have put out polylingual anthologies of haiku in Japan in recent years. The most important nationally circulated Japanese haiku magazine, Haiku (published by Kadokawa Shoten), devoted several of the almost three hundred pages in its September 1982 issue to articles on haiku in the West. And a growing number of Japanese critics has become aware of the advances of Western haiku poets; some have dared to suggest that Japanese haiku will be renewed by contact and interaction with Western haiku. In anthologie canadienne, in this handbook, and in the increasing appearance of haiku from several languages in Western and Japanese haiku periodicals, with translations, the haiku community has begun to share across national and language boundaries. In the meantime, poets in India, China, and North Africa have begun to write their own haiku. A truly international convocation of haiku poets seems likely in the near future with readings in Japanese and half a dozen other languages.

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101 Nature and Haiku HAIKU AND THE SEASONS You may have heard that haiku are nature poems, or that each haiku has to have a "season word" in it somewhere. Indeed, a number of haiku have some obvious mention of a season, like these: Snow falling on the empty parking-lot: Christmas Eve... Eric W. Amann Spring dawn: Turning toward the storm cloud, I lost sight of the bird. Julius Lester hana kuzu ni to a mass of petals kuchi aku koi ya a mouth-opening carp... natsu-mekite summer-appearing Tomiyasu Fusei 87

102 88 The Art of Haiku he banc de bois est humide, he banc de pierre est glacc: Rendez-vous d'automne. The wooden bench is wet, The stone bench is freezing: Meeting in autumn. Albert Poncin Still other haiku contain words that show the season, or at least give us a chance for an "educated guess": a mayfly struggles down the stream one wing flapping dry Vine leaves pressing church window Christopher Faiers wind circling into leaves Janice M. Bostok John Wills In the falling snow A laughing boy holds out his palms Until they are white. Richard Wright Mayflies are named for the month in which they appear. In John Wills's Tennessee one might be able to pinpoint the week during which such an event would occur, since Mayflies tend to come out all at once, breed, and die all at once. More subtle, the poem on the vine leaves, written in England, is a bit ambiguous. I suspect that if Faiers had seen ivy he would

103 NATURE AND HAIKU 89 have told us so. More likely, it is some vine he does not recognize. The intensity of "pressing" makes me vote for summer on this one. The uninitiated reader may say that the season is totally ambiguous in this poem; to do so leaves out a range of sensation which would be available to the reader who accepts one or another seasonal hypothesis. Since summer came to my mind spontaneously when I first read the poem several years ago, and I find no contradictory evidence in the poem, I accept it. (One could just as easily say that the vine is pressing against the window to escape the wintry draft, it now seems to me, which would result in a different set of sensations but it would result in sensations, and that is the point of haiku.) Again, "wind/ circling/ into/ leaves" gives me an image of autumn. I am drawing on my own northern-latitude experience, but expect that it accords with that of Bostok's Australia. If there is some weather phenomenon that often makes leaves swirl in circles during the Australian summer, I still have not lost by lending the poem my New Jersey autumnal associations. "In the falling snow" obviously refers to winter. Here the poem gains depth as we see the contrast between the warm palms of the boy and the cold of the snow, and see the warmth of his laughing against the cold backdrop of the snowy landscape. For many readers, the knowledge that this is the same Richard Wright, of Chicago, who wrote Black Boy and Native Son, may give his haiku added depth. Often enough we read a haiku without picking up on its seasonal associations. But if the experience recorded in the poem has a seasonal setting we are much more likely to grasp what the poet wants to share with us if we know and respond to the fact of the season as well as to the specifics of the poem. Using the name of a season or obviously seasonal event or object in a haiku gives the reader quite a bit of information in a few words. Even if the season is not stated or dramatically obvious in the poem we can probably still "get" the seasonal aspect of the experience from most traditional haiku.

104 90 The Art of Haiku THE JAPANESE TRADITION The haiku has a very specific, historical reason for indicating the season. Haiku originated as the starting verse, or hokku, of the longer renga, or "linked poem". Renga were written at parties, by several poets who took turns at writing successive short stanzas. The opening stanza of a renga, the hokku, had a very important function. It had to indicate when the renga was written. Some early hokku had the flavor of newspaper date lines. But subtle poets simply named objects associated with the particular time of year, thus suggesting, rather than stating, the season. The words for these objects came to be known as kigo, or "season words". In the fourteenth century, one of the first great critics of renga, Nijo Yoshimoto, suggested some "seasonal topics" (kidai) appropriate to the hokku of renga composed at different times of the year: First Month (lunar calendar; starts on "Chinese New Year"): lingering winter, remnants of snow, plum blossoms, Japanese nightingales; Second Month: plum blossoms, cherry blossoms; Fifth Month: cuckoos, "fifth-month rain" (i.e., the rain of early summer), orange blossoms, irises... Yoshimoto and his friends, all of whom were serious tanka poets, thought of renga-writing as a game. Games have rules. By the time of Basho, three centuries later, one could buy a book of rules for writing renga, and it would list the objects, mostly plants and animals, particularly flowers and birds, associated with each season. The original requirement, to specify the time of composition of a renga in its hokku, became altered to: The hokku must

105 NATURE AND HAIKU 91 be on a seasonal topic, or kidai, and contain a season word, or kigo. As the hokku became independent of the renga and developed into the haiku this rule stayed with it, right up to the beginning of the twentieth century. SEASON IN MODERN HAIKU Many Japanese haiku poets of the early twentieth century grew weary of the requirement for kigo. Some simply did not bother to learn which plants and animals and household objects "belonged" to which seasons. When these modern haiku poets were criticized by traditionalists they pointed out that the season-word lists were artificial even in those things which are very specific in time. For example, cherry blossoms flower and fall during a period of a few weeks. So in a specific area we can pinpoint almost to the week when a poem involving cherry blossoms takes place. But spring moves northward, in the northern hemisphere, and cherry blossom time in Kyoto is followed some time later by the display in Tokyo, and much later by the famous festival in Hirosaki. Yet a haiku with cherry blossoms will be associated with the dates of their appearance in Kyoto, according to the tradition. As the twentieth century and the modernization of Japan progressed, those who dropped season words also argued that much of modern life is spent indoors, in controlled environments. Or in cityscapes where relatively few manifestations of "nature" may be encountered in a day, or weeks at a time. The point of haiku is not the content of experience, but the quality of experience, and of perception. It makes no difference what experience a poet writes of, so long as it is an experience that can bring us to a new or deeper perception, and the emotion which arises from it. I doubt if any season-word list contains Takako's "freshwashed hair", and I would rather read the poem than the season-

106 92 The Art of Haiku word list in search of the phrase. But does not the poem seem filled with spring sunlight: fresh-washed hair everywhere I go making trickles As in reading traditional haiku with season words, where it helps to know the season intended by the poet so that we can fully appreciate the images and their setting, so also we can amplify our appreciation of many supposedly "seasonless" haiku by accepting some seasonal background that may suggest itself to us, either from the poem, or from some experience of our own that harmonizes with it. Though most Japanese haiku poets today still observe the seasonal cycle, and many Japanese haiku magazines open each issue with a group of specifically seasonal poems or have a column devoted to poems seasonally identified with the month of publication, there seems to be less tension over seasonal matters now than during the first half of this century. The relatively few haiku masters and editors who have ignored season words continue to ignore them. Most Japanese people, and most Japanese haiku poets, continue to feel that the seasonal element is basic to haiku. Haiku anthologies and collections of haiku by individual authors are often arranged by season, and by seasonal topics within each season. In part, this serves an indexing function. All of Basho's poems on "autumn wind" will be found under that heading in the BashO Kushtt (Collection of Basho's Haiku). In the magazines it also provides some sense of community of spirit. Many of the poems in a given issue will relate to the whole complex of experiences that form the concept "spring" or "summer" or "autumn" or "winter". Season pervades Japanese haiku at a deeper than conscious level. Western writers on the haiku have often briefly noted the season words in haiku, and then passed on to more important topics, like Zen. But for many Japanese the seasonal feeling holds the

107 NATURE AND HAIKU 93 key to haiku art. Their position is well stated by the committee of scholars commissioned to explain haiku to the West in the book Haikai and Haiku (1958): The season implied in a season word does not necessarily coincide with the calendar season, but must be understood in a particular aesthetic association with man's feelings. The days are longest in summer, but in spring, particularly after the equinox, the lengthening of the day strikes our senses more forcibly after the short days of winter. Thus nagaki hi, "the long day", is a season word of spring, not of summer. After citing additional examples, the committee goes on to say: Just as a haiku expresses the apex of an emotion, so a season word shows a particular thing at its best and most attractive. Hototogisu [Japanese cuckoo] is always represented as crying...; flowering trees and plants are conceived as in bloom...; the moon means the full moon, that of the fifteenth of September... and so on. So we see that a season word does not merely name an object, for a Japanese reader of haiku. Rather, the reader envisions that object at its fullest glory, and the vision itself is sufficient to trigger an aesthetic experience. Miyamori Asataro, a Japanese scholar who tried to help Westerners appreciate Japanese literature, wrote in An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern (1932): The Japanese are passionate lovers of Nature. Every feature, every phase, every change of Nature in the four seasons powerfully excites their delicate aesthetic sense... cherry-blossom viewing picnics... are the custom among all people, high and low, young and old; the Japanese often row out in pleasure-boats on the sea or on a lake to

108 94 The Art of Haiku enjoy the harvest moon; they often climb hills for views of the "silver world" of snow; they often visit rivers in darkness to contemplate fireflies;... On autumn evenings singing-insects kept in cages are sold at street-stalls; and townsfolk listen to them in order to hear "the voices of autumn." Obviously, the Japanese haiku poets who abandoned the season word do not have many poems in Haikai and Haiku or An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern. People who make it their business to interpret their native traditions to the outside world usually project a more conservative viewpoint than that held by contemporary artists in those traditions. Japanese who inquire about Western music will be treated to compositions by Bach and Tchaikovsky; they are unlikely to be introduced to the music of John Cage or Lucas Foss unless they happen to be talking to a serious student of contemporary music. But just as the music of Bach and Tchaikovsky underlies and makes possible, in some sense, the music of Cage and Foss, so the tradition of contemplating nature in its specific, momentary manifestations and taking deep aesthetic pleasure in them underlies and makes possible the poems of Shuson, Tota, and others who do not care whether or not they use season words. The Japanese haiku began with poets who looked, deeply and appreciatively, at the world around them. That world consisted mostly of what we call "nature". But the "nature" of Basho's day also included parasols, mosquito nets, and other paraphernalia of human affairs. Even the "fulling-block", equipment used in the dry-cleaning process of earlier times, is a season word. To be sure, these pieces of equipment have seasonal associations. But only by accident have sail boats, galoshes, and garden tools avoided promotion to the season-word lists; indeed, they may appear in some exhaustive modern poetic almanacs. Conventions arise because many people do the same thing. Many people wrote poems on frogs in the spring, when their

109 NATURE AND HAIKU 95 singing was first noticed, and therefore most noticeable. Soon it was the fashion to write of frogs in the spring. People who observed and observe this fashion do not deny the existence of frogs in the summer. But they express their membership in a special community of human perception by writing of frogs in the spring. As a reader of haiku it seems reasonable to try to know these conventions of season, and to use that knowledge to expand the meanings of haiku written according to them. To help with that, I have included a list of traditional Japanese season words in the reference section at the back of this handbook. When we find a Japanese haiku that does not seem to have a season word as such, it may still have a seasonal association for us. If so, we are within our rights to use that background for our own increased enjoyment, provided that we do not insist on our special interpretation to the exclusion of others. And while some more traditional Japanese haiku poets of today, and many Japanese individuals who may know little of the modern developments in haiku, can insist that without a season word a poem is not a haiku, we in the West do not have that right. A number of very serious and dedicated Japanese poets write seasonless verses which they consider to be in the haiku tradition. We cannot exclude them. THE WESTERN EXPERIENCE Very few documents widely circulated in the West have gone into much detail about the use of season words in Japanese haiku. So most poets who write haiku outside of Japan do not well understand the intricacies of using season words, or the interrelationships of season words (kigo) and seasonal topics (kidai). One American haiku magazine editor attempted to examine the use of possible season words in English-language haiku a few years agehe concluded that the geography in which haiku are being writ-

110 96 The Art of Haiku ten around the world varies too much to fit the confines of traditional Japanese season-word lists. Given these difficulties, non- Japanese haiku poets have generally not worried about season words. When season seems important to a Western haiku author, it can be incorporated easily enough. But very few Western haiku poets feel they must indicate the season in every haiku in order to make it a haiku. With their modern Japanese counterparts, they recognize that many events which they wish to record in verse do not involve a particularly seasonal consciousness. They concentrate on capturing the kinds of moments the sudden intimate seeings that they wish to remember for themselves and share with others.

111 8 The Form of Haiku TRADITIONAL FORM IN JAPANESE POETRY During some pre-literate epoch, Japanese speech came to move in units averaging twelve short, simple sounds. And these groups of sounds usually had a grammatical break after the fifth or seventh sound. Here are two examples of a similar effect in English: I bought some candy on my way to the ball game. I swung at the ball and then ran to first base. In the first example the main sense division comes after the word "candy"; in the second it comes after "ball". Although the two examples have different grammatical structures, they have similar rhythms. If we read them aloud one after the other we may notice rhythmical similarities in the pair of slightly shorter phrases, "I bought some candy" and "I swung at the ball", and in the pair of slightly longer phrases, "on my way to the ball game" and "and then ran to first base." As Japanese poetic form evolved, poems were made by arranging the groups of sounds so that their grammatical breaks all went the same way, usually with the shorter phrase going first. 97

112 98 The Art of Haiku A sense of cadence was created by ending with an additional phrase of about seven sounds. Poems in this form, called choka ("long poem"), have from three to over one hundred groups of about twelve sounds. The following anonymous poem from around the sixth century demonstrates the form. I have tried to approximate the effect in the translation. fuyugomori ham sarikureba ashita ni wa shiratsuyu oki yube ni wa kasumi tanabiku hatsuse no ya konure ga shita ni uguisu naku mo As winter's bonds grant spring freedom in the morning white dew falls down, in the evening mist stretches out; on Hatsuse Plain under the twigs of trees a nightingale sings! This poem is from the ManyOshU, the first great anthology of Japanese poetry, collected in the eighth century A.D. Many of the poems in the ManyOshU are tanka ("short poem"), which have the same form as choka, but with only two units of nominally twelve sounds each, plus the final phrase of about seven. Here is an example by the great ManyOshU poet, Hitomaro: akikaze wa suzushiku narinu uma namete iza no ni yuka na hagi no hana-mi ni The autumn wind has become cooler now; horses abreast, let's go to the meadow to see the hagi blooms. Hagi is a small, pink-flowering shrub, sometimes called "bush clover" in English. We see that there is one major pause in Hitomaro's poem, after the first twelve sounds in the Japanese (at the

113 THE FORM OF HAIKU 99 end of the first line of the translation). Many tanka of the Many- Osha have this structure. However, by the time of the Kokinshtt, a second anthology (collected in the early tenth century), another structure for the tanka had become popular. Many of the Kokinsha tanka divide near the middle of the second twelve sounds. For example, here is a poem by one of the editors of the Kokinsha, Ki no Tsurayuki: yadori shite ham no yamabe ni netaru yo wa yume no naka ni mo hana zo chirikeru Finding shelter among the hills of spring slept the night; even amid my dreaming the flower blossoms fell. The Kokinsha also has many tanka with no sharp division, or which divide somewhere else. But these two patterns became the two main structures of tanka. We can look at these structures more easily if we consider each five- or seven-sound unit as one verse-line. Here are the two tanka given above, in the usual format for tanka translations, side-by-side, for comparison: The autumn wind has become cooler now; horses abreast, let's go to the meadow to see the hagi blooms. Hitomaro in the Manyoshu (ca. 700 A.D.) Finding shelter among the hills of spring, slept the night; even amid my dreaming the flower blossoms fell. Ki no Tsurayuki in the Kokinsha (ca. 900 A.D.) The semicolons mark the major rhythmical breaks. In the originals the breaks divide the poems 5/7//5/7/7 and 5/7/5//7/7, respectively. (In the translations I have duplicated the original

114 100 The Art of Haiku word order as closely as possible, and substituted the natural English rhythms of two accented beats and three accented beats, respectively, for the natural Japanese rhythms of five and seven sounds.) During the next two hundred years the rhythmical structure of the second example above came to dominate tanka composition. Poets of the classical era often met together for the purpose of composing and sharing tanka. By the thirteenth century it became the fashion, after some hours of deep poetic concentration on their individual works, to relax by writing a humorous renga together. The form of the long collaborative renga resembled a chain of tanka, with each poet writing a stanza of about seventeen sounds (5/7/5) or about fourteen sounds (7/7) in turn. The haiku originated as the opening verse of a renga. Therefore the traditional haiku in Japanese lacks the formal resolution or cadence provided by the pair of seven-sound phrases at the end of a tanka. In terms of its origin, the form of the traditional haiku is incomplete. TRADITIONAL FORM IN HAIKU Many Western authors have fallen into the simplistic trap of saying that the haiku is a seventeen-syllable poem in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. This has led to whole classrooms of teachers and children counting English syllables as they attempt to write haiku. But Japanese haiku are written in Japanese, which is quite different from English or other Western languages. In fact, Japanese poets do not count "syllables" at all. Rather, they count onji. The Japanese word onji does not mean "syllable", it means "sound symbol", and refers to one of the phonetic characters used in writing Japanese phonetic script. In the language of the ManyOshU one of these characters did indeed repre-

115 THE FORM OF HAIKU 101 sent one syllable, as we think of syllables. But even then, each of the onji of Japanese represented a very short sound, much simpler than most syllables in, say, English or German. Since the ManyOsha the Japanese language has changed a great deal. Now it incorporates double-long vowel sounds, diphthongs, and a final consonant. In some words it takes two or three onji to write what we would consider one syllable. For example, how many syllables in ManyGshti? I think most of us would agree on three. But in Japanese it is counted as six onji. Japanese onji average quite a bit shorter than most English syllables, and are much more uniform in length. Compare the following representative English syllables and Japanese onji: English syllables: a on two wound wrought Japanese onji: a n ka shi tsu In Japanese the sound "tsu" takes no longer to say than the sound "a". And the Japanese probably say that "a" faster than Americans in most situations. I think most speakers of English will agree with me that "wound" and "wrought" usually take twice as long to say as "on" or longer. Even the clipped English words "potato" and "tomato" are just barely a match for common three-onji words in Japanese like aoi, atsui, and toi. Some years ago I did a study of Japanese haiku recited by a Japanese actress and English translations of the same poems recited by an American speaker. They were part of the sound track of a movie, Haiku, produced by the Japan Society, Inc., of New York. The movie presented twenty-eight haiku and translations. Even though the translations had fewer syllables than the Japanese haiku had onji, the readings of the translations averaged almost sixty percent longer than the readings of the Japanese. Granted, some of this difference may be due to variation between the readers, but native speakers of both Japanese and English whom I questioned told me that the reciters spoke at a normal pace.

116 102 The Art of Haiku As a result of this study I concluded that an English-language translation of a typical Japanese haiku should have from ten to twelve syllables in order to simulate the duration of the original. A well-known translator of Japanese poetry, Hiroaki Sato, has also concluded that his haiku translations "must come to about... twelve syllables in the case of those written in the orthodox 5-7-5". Maeda Cana, a scholar who has made an extensive study of quantity in Japanese and English poems, has worked very hard at duplicating the durations and rhythmical patterns of Japanese haiku in her English translations. Her translations average just under twelve syllables each. I find it significant that two other translators agree with the finding which I independently arrived at: Approximately twelve English syllables best duplicates the length of Japanese haiku in the traditional form of seventeen onji. The simplistic notion of seventeen-syllable haiku has obscured another important feature of traditional haiku form here in the West. Most traditional haiku have a kireji, or "cutting word". The kireji usually divides the stanza into two rhythmical parts, one of twelve onji and the other of five. The kireji is a special grammar word or verb ending that indicates the completion of a phrase or clause. In effect, the kireji is a sort of sounded, rather than merely written, punctuation. It indicates a pause, both rhythmically and grammatically. Some kireji also lend a particular emotional flavor to the five- or twelve-onji phrase that they end. Along with the kigo (season word), the kireji carried over from the starting verse of renga into the independent haiku. The starting verse of a renga also had to leave room for an additional thought, to be added in the next verse. Often the starting verse was grammatically incomplete. The tendency toward grammatical incompleteness carried over into haiku as either incomplete sentences or very clipped, almost telegraphic speech. This allows haiku poets to concentrate on image-making words as they omit much of the complex grammar that occurs in everyday conversational Japanese. The great British student of traditional Japanese haiku, R. H.

117 THE FORM OF HAIKU 103 Blyth, once suggested an ideal English parallel for the form of the Japanese haiku: three lines of two, three, and two accented beats, respectively. Blyth's intuitive suggestion, coupled with a kirejilike pause, yields a form that consists of one pentameter (fivebeat) unit, plus one unit less than half as long as a pentameter line. Such a form very nearly duplicates the traditional form of the Japanese haiku using the English language in ways that are native to traditional English poetry, and therefore comfortable to native speakers of English. Such a form also results in a sense of rhythmical incompleteness in English, similar to the formal incompleteness of the traditional Japanese haiku. Here are a few traditional Japanese haiku, with English translations that follow the two-three-two form. In each case, there is a line-for-line correspondence between the original and the translation. Punctuation in English marks the locations of the kireji in the originals: furuike ya old pond... kawazu tobikomu a frog leaps in mizu no oto water's sound Basho fuji hitotsu Fuji alone uzumi nokoshite remains unburied: zvakaba kana the young leaves! Buson utsukushiki a really lovely tako agarikeri kite has risen above; kojiki goya a beggar's hut Issa kumo ofumi walking the clouds kasumi o suya even sucking the mist! agehibari soaring skylark Shiki

118 104 The Art of Haiku By Basho's seventeenth century there was not as much emphasis on kireji as there had been in previous centuries, but haiku were permanently marked by the kireji pause. Most traditional haiku have a major pause after either the first five or the first twelve onji. Occasionally a poet uses a kireji in the middle, between the sixth and the twelfth onji, for effect, countering the normal five-seven-five movement of the traditional form. In these instances the poet plays against the expectations created by the traditional form, much as Shakespeare's occasional run-on lines in the sonnets go counter to our expectation of the sonnet. (See kireji in the glossary for more information.) We can summarize the traditional form of the Japanese haiku as follows: 1. A Japanese haiku in the traditional form usually has two rhythmical units, one of about twelve onji and one of about five, the break between them often marked with a special grammatical device called a kireji, or cutting word. 2. Since the break between the two rhythmical units is equally likely to occur after the first five onji or after the first twelve, the normal rhythm of a traditional haiku in Japanese is five, seven, and five onji. 3. The form of traditional haiku originated in the incomplete opening stanza of a longer poem; the haiku form is therefore rhythmically incomplete. 4. Haiku often omit features of normal grammar, such as complete sentences and complicated verb endings. This picture of the form of Japanese haiku holds until about There were some variations. The kireji waxed and waned in importance from one era to another. Poets occasionally wrote haiku with a few extra onji. For a time a seven-seven-five form was almost as common as five-seven-five, but by the end of

119 THE FORM OF HAIKU 105 Basho's career five-seven-five had become the norm. From then until the intrusion of European literature traditional haiku went relatively unchanged in Japan. A "TRADITIONAL FORM" FOR HAIKU IN ENGLISH It seems to me that the most pleasing form for a "traditional haiku" in English would be similar to the form of the translations presented a page or two earlier: 1. For haiku in English an overall form consisting of seven accented syllables, plus unaccented syllables up to a total of about twelve, would yield a rhythmical structure native to English and at the same time approximate the duration of traditional Japanese haiku. A major grammatical pause between the second and third or fifth and sixth accented syllables would provide the sense of division created by the Japanese kireji. 2. While Japanese are used to reading traditional texts in which rhythms are not visually identified, the Western notion of a printed poem-text incorporates the idea of a line of type equalling a rhythmical unit, or verse-line. Therefore a three-line structure of two, three, and two accented syllables, respectively, would establish rhythmical proportions similar to those of traditional Japanese haiku. 3. Since the most commonly encountered short structure in traditional English poetry is the "heroic couplet" with two five-beat lines, the two-three-two-beat structure with a strong grammatical break after the second or fifth beat, as proposed, would yield a sense of rhythmical incompleteness similar to that in Japanese haiku.

120 106 The Art of Haiku 4. Grammar should be stripped to the minimum that seems reasonably natural. Complete sentences may or may not occur; articles ("a, an, and the") and prepositions should be used sparingly, but not unnaturally omitted. I have put the suggestions for a "traditional form" for haiku in English in the middle of this chapter so that they will not be taken as the last word on the subject of haiku form. They are offered to provide a model of an English-language form that corresponds both to our sense of poetic tradition and to the quantities and rhythmical proportions of, as well as the amount of information normally contained in, traditional Japanese haiku. Those who wish to write what they might think of as "traditional haiku" in English may use them as guidelines. But since haiku have only been written in English for a few score years, it seems a bit early to call any kind of haiku in English "traditional".* Here are a few excellent haiku by poets writing in English which happen to be in the form I am suggesting as "traditional": Those wishing to create a "traditional" haiku form in other languages should consider the relationship between the Japanese tradition and their own in regard to rhythmical structures, what sounds natural to their own poetic sensibilities, and so on. They should also consider the duration in time of typical Japanese haiku, as well as whether the same amount of information will usually fit into the same amount of time in both languages. For example, while German syllables are approximately as complex and long in duration as English syllables, those in the Romance languages tend to be shorter and simpler; perhaps a nominally five-seven-five syllabic form for haiku in Spanish or Italian would duplicate the length of traditional Japanese haiku. But in English and German seventeen-syllable haiku average about sixty percent longer than traditional Japanese haiku. A "haiku" in seventeen Chinese monosyllabic words would be at least twice as long in duration as a traditional Japanese haiku, and contain about twice as much information!

121 THE FORM OF HAIKU 107 where peonies bloom the tomcat lurks and watches falls asleep Beverly White Jeep tracks over deer tracks in new snow William R. Mosolino as far toward the trees as the wire mesh gives the fox's nose Michael McClintock to hear them walking more slowly leaves falling Gary Hotham a yellow leaf stuck between screen and window not a word Selma Stefanile drop of ocean in my navel reflects the Amusement Park Alan Pizzarelli While the first four authors either let the reader find the major grammatical break or, in McClintock's case, indicate it with punctuation, the last two use space to indicate the break equivalent to that provided by kireji in Japanese. Hotham leaves a blank line, dividing the poem into a 2/3//2 rhythm. Pizzarelli breaks the poem into four "lines" but, as with the midpoem kireji of some Japanese haiku, this creates a more nearly equal, two-part rhythm, running 2/2//1/2. Compare this with the rhythm produced by the mid-poem kireji ya in this poem by Basho, where the original has the rhythm S/3//4/5: kiku no hana chrysanthemums saku ya ishiya no bloom... amid the stones ishi no ai of the stone-yard

122 108 The Art of Haiku MODERNIZATION AND HAIKU FORM As the modernization of Japanese culture progressed, many Japanese haiku poets remained more or less faithful to the traditional form and content of haiku. Others experimented freely. Even ignoring the extreme variations, we find many haiku with very irregular rhythms, including poems much longer than seventeen onji. Here are three examples, showing the number of onji in the originals, by Santoka, Hosai, and Ippekiro, respectively: matsu wa katamuite 8 the pines careen aranami no kudakeru mama 11 the way the rough waves crash suzume no atatakasa o nigiri hanashite yaru 4 grasping 9 the warmth of a sparrow 6 and letting it go aki no hi no hinaka no no no ishi no nukumi 17 the warmth of a stone of a field of midday of a day of autumn* While Ippekiro's haiku is seventeen onji long, there is no break in the run-on rhythm at all. Breaking it into the traditional five, seven, five divides a word in the middle. We should note that most Japanese "Free-Meter Haiku" poets, in other words, those who ignore the traditional fiveseven-ftve-onji form, have continued to write their poems in a single column the way traditional haiku are written. Thus the visual form of their poems on the page equates to one line of type in English. There is no authority for breaking the non-traditional haiku of Santoka, Hosai, or Ippekiro into verse-lines, as I have The order of the original is exactly opposite, from autumn to warmth.

123 THE FORM OF HAIKU 109 done often in Chapter 3 or above, other than my own sense of the rhythmical structure of each original. A few Japanese haiku poets experimented with typographically indicated verse-lines. Ohashi Raboku ( ), who contributed haiku to Seisensui's SOun, appears to have been among the first, with the following poem published in 1931: sara mo arote kurenu mono are kore to higurashi won't even wash the dishes do this, do that... evening cicada The language of this poem is colloquial, rather than "poetic". Tadashi Kondo suggests that if we take it as mimicking a few snatches of conversation, and fill in the blanks, we get something like: "He doesn't even do the dishes, and keeps telling me to do this and that all day until the time of the evening cicadas." In fact, the word which literally means "clear cicada" is a pun on phrases meaning "passing the time" and "the day closes". Some translators call the higurashi the "day-darkener". Raboku did not live long enough to follow this example with many more, but even in this earliest use of typographic verselines he demonstrates the flow of syntax visually. This principle letting the appearance of a poem on the page be governed by the flow of speech is one key to the structure of most modern poetry throughout the world today. Abandoning the worn-out vocabulary of supposedly poetic language meant also abandoning the old forms which had been fitted to it. Takayanagi Shigenobu ( ) started writing haiku in the traditional style and form. Later he experimented with visually indicating his verse-lines, but some of his poems in this manner seem to read just as well in the traditional form. For example: mi o sorasu niji no zetten shokeidai body-arching rainbow's pinnacle gallows-stand

124 110 The Art of Haiku is a striking poem that loses almost none of its force when found in the traditional single column of type (as I once encountered it), and read in the three verse-lines of the traditional structure: mi o sorasu niji no zetten shokeidai body-arching rainbow's pinnacle gallows-stand What does Shigenobu gain by setting his poem out on the page in the unusual manner? It is visually arresting, especially to a Japanese, who normally expects to encounter haiku written or printed in a single column. And the layout puts extra space between the introductory image, of a person arching back to look up at a rainbow, and the chilling object found at that rainbow's pinnacle the gibbet, which is a body-arching device in its own right. In effect, the layout of the poem leaves the reader in doubt as to what is at the top of the rainbow's arc for the space of time required to find the next word on the page, much as the visual experience stretches the capacity of the viewer. What is that thing cutting the rainbow? Why, it's a gallows! Although Shigenobu experimented widely with visual formats, traditional haiku rhythms lurk in many of his poems. The following may be one of his more extreme pieces, though some are longer: sanmyaku no hida ni ki ki SM mi umo re ru mimi ra in a mountain range's creases hear ing clear iy the bur ied ear s

125 THE FORM OF HAIKU 111 In a more normal format it would look like this, sanmyaku no hida ni kikisumi umoreru mimi-ra in a mountain range's creases hearing clearly the buried ears revealing a not unreasonable variation of the traditional form: five, seven, seven. Shigenobu is playing with the reader in much the same way as e. e. cummings in his famous "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-sa-g-r", but Shigenobu is really abandoning traditional haiku form in a superficial way, much as cummings only superficially abandons traditional sonnet form in many of his poems. Still, Shigenobu's original form makes the reader work, right up to the last phoneme, to find out just what he will say and that work helps build the effect of the startling image, just as cummings's anagram gymnastics allow us to perceive the object in question only after the explosion of its leap!: grasshopper. Another key to most modern verse structure is the desire of the poet to lead the reader's perception in a rhythm that corresponds to the poet's experience. In explaining this principle of organic form a friend once said it was an attempt to capture "the cadence of perception". The larger point here is that many Japanese haiku poets, led by the radicals of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, have refused to be stuck in the box of one or two rigid metrical patterns. Though most Japanese write their first haiku in the conservative atmosphere of the classroom in strict traditional form, even the most traditional haiku magazines publish poems that vary from that form. And the last decade has seen new interest in the more experimental poets of the years prior to World War II. More Japanese today are reading the haiku of Santoka, Hosai, and the other free-meter poets than ever before.

126 112 The Art of Haiku CONCLUSION In an essay published in 1912 Ezra Pound stated the case for stepping out of traditional poetic forms succinctly: "I believe in an 'absolute rhythm'... in poetry which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed." Since the shade of emotion to be expressed changes moment by moment, experience by experience, most serious modern poets find it less than helpful to restrict themselves to rigid traditional forms. However, many Western haiku poets first learned of the haiku as a "poem in seventeen syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, five" and began writing in that form. As you can see from looking over the work in the chapters on the history of Western haiku, some very striking poems have been written in this mode. There is no reason to discard such fine poems simply because they were written under a mistaken impression of the nature of haiku form in Japanese. In fact, some of the "five-seven-ftve" poets are well aware that the form they write in is longer than the traditional Japanese form, but they find it still has a balance and grace that they like, and provides a kind of challenge when they attempt to compose a haiku. Today in both Japan and the West haiku poets honestly differ with one another over the definition of haiku. Many perhaps most Japanese who write haiku feel that it should be written in a fixed form. They recognize the five-seven-five-onji structure as the norm, with occasional variations such as seven-seven-five or the addition of one or at most two extra onji to a verse-line. Most traditionalists allow at least this much variation. Many of the more prominent traditionalists have paid less and less attention to this aspect of haiku. They evidently feel that the kind of experience recorded or built in a haiku is more important a denning characteristic than its form. Even poets such as Ippekiro, who reject traditional form and season words, often write poems which have seasonal associations, and occasionally

127 THE FORM OF HAIKU 113 fall into a structure near the traditional rhythm. And just as most haiku poets have gradually, if grudgingly, accepted modern objects and experiences into haiku content, they have also more and more frequently accepted modern speech rhythms and vocabulary. The renga of Basho's day was vital and growing largely because it built upon a rejection of the rigidities of the past as to speech and content. It was a break from tradition which ultimately renewed and sustained that tradition. The early twentieth century trends toward modern content, language, and speech rhythms in Japanese haiku resulted from attempts at again renewing and sustaining that tradition. Now that the conservatism of the war era and the despair of the immediate post-war decades is past, perhaps the tradition of Japanese haiku has resumed the normal process of growth and change. The continuity with the pre-war Humanist school of haiku, provided by the longevity and vigor of such poets as Nakamura Kusatao and Kato Shuson, and the dynamic work of poets like Kaneko Tota emerging since the war, should help this process. Westerners interested in haiku have only just begun to discover that not all Japanese haiku conform to the traditional structure. Ten years after the last of Blyth's books on haiku, the word finally began to reach us. Soichi Furuta's translations of Ippekiro came out in 1974, followed by Makoto Ueda's Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology in John Stevens's free-form translations of Santoka appeared in 1980, closely followed in 1981 by the anthology From the Country of Eight Islands, with one-line translations of Hosai's haiku by Hiroaki Sato. Perhaps as the reading public, and Western haiku poets, become more aware of this body of work, they will come to understand haiku as a vehicle for sharing experience, rather than as a vessel for thoughts about nature. While the liquid in a vessel conforms to the vessel's shape, the most practical vehicle-designers take the shape of the contents into account. Today's writer of haiku, East or West, is free to imitate the

128 114 The Art of Haiku styles of the old masters or to look to the more modern works of our immediate predecessors and contemporaries for models. While American haiku poets warred over "traditional" versus free-form American haiku throughout the 1960s, in the 1970s' each camp acknowledged that there were poems of outstanding worth in both styles. Now anyone can write a haiku in the style that fits the needs of the particular poet, moment, and perception. And write another in a different style the next time.

129 9 The Craft of Haiku THE SENSES, THE IMAGE, AND HAIKU "I sense, therefore I am!" Descartes might better have said. Our first route to experience is through the senses. Our experiences give rise to emotion. Our language captures this connection very well, for when we talk of our "feelings" or say that something "touched" us we apply to our inner mental state words that literally mean having a physical sensation of the outer world. We store our experiences in the mind as mental images. In the rest of this book the word "image" means words which name objects or actions that cause sensations from which we form mental images, or the mental images themselves. An image is the language equivalent, or the mental equivalent, for a physical sensation or a set of sensations. Vivid, clear writing gives the reader clear images. This results in a kind of vicarious experience, in which the reader pictures what the writer's words show, hears what they sound, feels what they touch, and so on. If a writer captures the images of an experience that produced emotion, then the reader if comprehend- 115

130 116 The Art of Haiku ing and sympathetic will have a similar emotion based on experiencing the images provided by the writer. The haiku is the quintessence of this kind of writing. One of Buson's simplest haiku presents a single image, only slightly elaborated: botan chitte peony falling uchikasanarinu dropped overlapping nisanpen two or three petals The peony is a rich, vibrantly colored flower. Its petals fall, and as they do, they overlap one another, two or three of them. The lushness of the petals, even as they fade, contrasts with the falling. By focusing on the interval between the life and death of the peony blossoms Buson gives us both. Some haiku seem to contain only one essential image, like Buson's poem on the peony petals. But depth, a chill down the spine, usually comes from perceiving some relationship/ which implies two or more things relating to each other. Sometimes that relationship is between something stated and something unstated, as in the following poem by Elizabeth Searle Lamb, with its contrast between our usual state of going through the world blind, and then suddenly pausing halfway up the stair white chrysanthemums Most haiku, either directly or by implication, present two objects, actions, or states of being. Usually there is little grammatical connection between the things presented, and sometimes the mixture of contrasts and unities is abrupt and startling. To use a photographic metaphor, I call one method of doing this the "zoom-lens effect", in which there is a rapid shift of focus, of space and distance. This haiku by Penny Harter is a good example:

131 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 117 in the meadow the cow's lips wet with grass Here the eye jumps from the meadow directly to the lips of the cow. And on those lips we see the dew-wet grass a close-up of one minute portion of "the meadow". Harter's poem is a special case of the more general phenomenon in haiku, particularly Japanese haiku, in which an object and its action appear in a setting. The poet must be careful to avoid merely providing a background. The setting itself becomes an image to interact dynamically with the other, more sharply focused image. Here is an example by Kaga no Chiyo (often called Chiyo-ni, "Nun Chiyo", ): hirou mono things picked up mina ugoku nari all start to move shiohigata low-tide beach First we are in close, actually feeling the rough shells in our hands, the sudden startled movements. Then we look up, across the broader expanse of water. Our surprise and delight in this small squirming in our palms is tempered by the breadth of the beach and sea, and our own smallness as we, too, wriggle in the grip of forces we do not understand. While setting and an object or action in the foreground often interact in a haiku, many haiku contain two foreground images. These images act like the poles in a spark gap. The sparks jump back and forth faster than the mind can follow. A Canadian haiku poet and critic, Rod Willmot, uses the term "resonance" to describe these relationships. Here is an example by Penny Harter: snowflakes dust on the toes of my boots

132 118 The Art of Haiku Do not read this as a metaphor! The "dust" is really dust. And when you reach into your closet for your boots to go out in the first snow of the year, your thumb probably marks a shiny spot right on the toe. The dust reminds us of the time that has passed since we last wore our boots in the snow. The momentary phenomenon of snowflakes echoes against the whole round of the seasons. And dust as the emblem of time reminds us also of our origin and end. Haiku are as simple as life and death. Kenneth Yasuda says that "what, when, and where" are the three elements of haiku. Usually the image itself is the what, while it implies the when and the where. For example, in this haiku by John Wills the moon at dawn lily pads blow white in a sudden breeze we have the time of day plainly stated; and "lily pads" gives a fair hint as to the time of year. "Lily pads" also tells us that we are on a lake, pond, or some slow-moving part of a river, giving us an impression of place. The when and where show up in some parts of this haiku, but the what fills it entirely. To the opening image in the first line, the second and third lines add a beautiful and complex image that builds as it moves from word to word, line to line. The moon suggests roundness, mirrored immediately in the potential of day and its round light, the sun. And the moon suggests also the dark of the night sky where we normally expect to see it. The roundness of the lily pads echoes the roundness of the moon, though their dark color and the darkness of the water at dawn relate to the darkness that recedes as day comes on. But moving through the lines we discover the flipped-up white undersides of the lily pads, as strange a sight in its dark surroundings as the moon's light is at dawn. We see the blowing in the lily pad's action, then in the last line feel the temperature and pressure of the sudden

133 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 119 breeze against our bodies. Does the chill arise from the seen resonance, or from the breeze that unexpectedly caresses us? Both. This poem aptly demonstrates another principle of haiku, first mentioned so far as I know by Robert Spiess, who says that usually "the better haiku poets use multiple sense imagery". One might wonder how many senses can be involved in a single, short haiku. The following haiku by Anita Virgil may give us a start at an answer: walking the snow-crust not sinking sinking When I ask a class of elementary school children to tell me all the senses in the first line of this poem they say: movement (muscle sense), balance, sight, hearing, temperature, touch, smell (it smells different when there is snow on the ground), and some suggest adding taste, for the snowflakes they catch with their tongues though that seems stretching it a bit. The second line adds no new sensations, but the trepidation it implies sharpens some already present in the first line. The third line adds the organ, or visceral sense, that "feeling in the pit of the stomach" when the elevator suddenly goes down. Omitting the snowflake catchers, I count eight senses! (We should not fail to note the shape of the words on the page, resembling the shape of the snow-crust where something has broken through it.) This poem also demonstrates the lightness of recording the objects and events that cause sensations in the order of perception, as suggested by Harold G. Henderson. Probably Anita Virgil was not fully conscious of all the sensations involved in this "walking the snow-crust" experience when she had it. Yet by recording the experience in words that name its actual objects and events, and by choosing and ordering her words to correspond to the sights, sounds, and physical reality of the experience, she has made it possible for us to re-experience it, and even perhaps to imagine parts of it that she had hardly noticed.

134 120 The Art of Haiku In the best haiku the author tries to share the experience itself, so that the reader may share in that experience as directly as possible, and not be limited to the author's response to it. THE LANGUAGE OF HAIKU The brevity of haiku forces a deeper, more disciplined approach to language than any other kind of writing. As William Carlos Williams wrote: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant. Brevity, and the consequent stripping away of the unnecessary, provide haiku with several advantages not always found in longer kinds of writing. Brevity encourages drama. We create drama by raising questions in the minds of readers that can only be answered by further reading. Often the "resonance" between images in a haiku raises just such questions, which may be answered in part, or not at all: A boy wading watching a dark snake winding out of the river. James Tipton natsukusa ni in summer grass kikansha no sharin a steam engine's wheels kite tomaru come and stop Yamaguchi Seishi (b. 1901)

135 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 121 Brevity requires that the poet leave out unneeded grammar words and connectives. For example, the lack of connectives allows the images of the following haiku to resonate with each other: meigetsu ya harvest moon... keburi haiyuku smoke goes creeping mizu no ue over the water Hattori Ransetsu ( ; disciple of Basho) As the haiku gives us the moon first, we look up at it, enjoying its fullness and brilliance. Then we notice the smoke spreading over the water, and see the moon striking down through it. Connecting the moon with the rest of the poem grammatically would have destroyed the effect, for we would not have seen the moon for itself, with the interaction coming gradually into our consciousness. Punning provides a means of expanding meaning common to all languages. In the following pre-basho hokku the pun in the translation duplicates that of the original: toshi kurete the year giving out hito mono kurenu people give me nothing koyoi kana this evening... Yamazaki Sokan ( ) The opening line is a standard expression which would usually be translated "the year closing". However, when the second line echoes back the sound kure-, root of the verb "to give", the meaning of the first line suddenly expands. In contrast to the people Sokan knows, who will not be giving him presents during the New Year's celebration, the year "gives out" right up to the very end. Perhaps a little ruefully, Sokan honestly remarks on his situation, being a monk, having given up family connections and the presents that go along with them. But he also smiles at the year's gift to him; the poem is a sort of humorous prayer of

136 122 The Art of Haiku thanksgiving. However, not all punning in Japanese poetry is simple or intended for humor. Grammatical ambiguity, in which a word or phrase serves two different grammatical purposes at once, appears in the most famous hokku of all, Basho's furuike ya old pond... kawazu tobikomu a frog leaps in mizu no oto water's sound The second line ends in a form that may signal the end of a sentence, or may continue on without a break in meaning into the last line. Read the first way, we have "old pond... a frog leaps in" and then the result, "water's sound". But when we notice the second alternative the meaning shifts to this: "old pond... a frog leaps in water's sound" in other words, "old pond... the sound of the water a frog leaps into". In a plain prose statement this latter meaning would be the only interpretation, but placing the statement into the traditional form of the haiku causes an enjambment between the verse-lines that opens the meaning. The enjambment makes "a frog leaps in" seem at first a complete sentence, then part of a larger grammatical whole. Generally, haiku poets avoid wide-open ambiguity. Without a fairly well-defined concrete image there is not much for the reader to build on. But occasionally risking the border of out-andout vagueness produces startling results, as in this widely praised haiku by L. A. Davidson: beyond stars beyond star Examples of literary allusion in haiku appear in Chapters 2 and 3. This method of expanding meaning is used frequently in Japanese haiku, but often eludes Western readers, or even modern Japanese, who may not have the literary background necessary to appreciate many allusions. However, Nakamura Kusatao

137 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 123 has a poem with an allusion that most of us will understand immediately: sora wa taisho no sky the Beginning's aosa tsuma yori blue from the wife ringo uku getting an apple With his allusion to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, Kusatao both records a lighthearted impression of his and his wife's innocence, and jokingly suggests that they are about to fall from that state. Another way to capitalize on reference to earlier work is allusive variation, common to haiku in both Japan and the West. Sometimes a poet will paraphrase the haiku of another, changing just enough to shift the images and their relationships without making it hard to see the resemblance between the new poem and the earlier one on which it rings changes. For example, the following haiku by Jack Cain first appeared in Haiku magazine (Toronto) in 1969: an empty elevator opens closes The poem was included in Cor van den Heuvel's Haiku Anthology, published in In 1976 the magazine Bonsai published this haiku by Frank K. Robinson: the elevator opens... vacant masks... closes When an elevator opens we half expect to see a crowd of people standing in it. There is some air of mystery about an opening elevator. But here the elevator opens to reveal seemingly empty people. When we add to Robinson's poem the prior knowledge of Jack Cain's haiku, we discover that elevators may be empty in

138 124 The Art of Haiku more than one way. Cain's elevator seems to be going up and down looking for passengers and not finding any. The poem has a certain sense of loneliness, what the Japanese call sabi. Robinson, however, supplies us with an elevator already full; it is the people in it who appear empty. The focus of "the empty elevator poem" of which these are two variations has shifted from the almost personified elevator to the depersonalized humans in the elevator. Though one occasionally stumbles across a frank simile in pre-modern hokku, the use of simile and metaphor seems to have increased in recent decades, perhaps due to Western influences. The best similes in haiku, as in any poetry, strike us because they are both apt and unusual. Here is an example by Tomizawa Kakio ( ): Wten ni wintry sky botan no yo na like a peony hito no shit a one's tongue When I first read this poem two conflicting images struck me. I saw people sticking their petal-like tongues out to catch snowflakes. And I thought of a tongue, round, red, and lush, hidden in the mouth like a peony bud beneath the snow. Either way, the simile creates a sensuality that dramatically contrasts with the wintry sky. Like similes, metaphors were occasionally used in the older hokku, but modern Japanese haiku poets seem to have been more successful in creating depth and mystery through metaphor. In Chapter 3 we encountered examples by Kaneko Tota and Kato Shuson. Here is another, by Mori Sumio (b. 1919): kari no kazu watarite sora ni mio mo nashi a number of geese migrating in the sky not even a wake

139 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 125 Sumio has commented that although the wild geese, particularly their migrations, have long been a subject of literature, one does not see them so often in Japan anymore. The careful selection of words in this haiku creates several overtones. "A number" suggests that he could see a specific number the geese were not "countless", as they perhaps had been in the past. Sumio also noted that he did not just say a "line" of geese, because he did actually look at each one. Once this particular group has passed there are no more. Mio, not an everyday word, literally means "water-tail"; Sumio was very conscious of borrowing the word from the water and putting it in the sky. But in this sky there is no wake the geese go, leaving no sign of their passage. Synesthesia, a special variety of metaphor in which the author writes of one sensation in terms of another, occurs in haiku now and then. Perhaps this is not so much a technique of haiku as an unusual sensory perception that sometimes finds its way into haiku. Psychologists have verified the common observation that the senses interact with one another, that one may have an impression of colors while listening to music, for example, or of smells while seeing a movie, and so on. Basho's haiku exhibit synesthesia more often than do any other poet's, so far as I know. One of his more famous poems illustrates a subtle mixing of the sensations: sazanami ya rippling waves kaze no kaori no with the wind scent aihyoshi beat together Studying the sight and sound of the rippling waves, Basho gradually becomes so attuned to the rhythms that he feels the harmonic beating of the waves in the scent and push of the wind. The pathetic fallacy a kind of metaphor or personification in which human actions, thoughts, or emotions are attributed to other than human beings appears occasionally in humorous

140 126 The Art of Haiku haiku, especially those written before Basho. For example, from the old haikai-no-renga master Sokan: te o tsuite hands to floor uta moshiaguru offering up a song kawazu kana the frog... Frogs traditionally "sing" in Japanese poetry, but here the "hands together" and "offering up" suggest an even closer parallel to human activity and motivation. Onomatopoeia dramatically unifies a poem and the experience it represents. R. H. Blyth distinguishes three types of onomatopoeia in haiku: direct representation of sound; representation of movement or of sensations other than sound; and "the representation of soul states". Words represent sounds fairly often in haiku. Many words are onomatopoetic, such as chickadee, swish, screech, whistle, etc. The trick in writing onomatopoetic haiku is to avoid using too many words that sound like what they mean individually, and find combinations of words that sound like the aural image in toto. Buson does this very nicely in the following poem on "fulling blocks" a sort of mallet used to dry clean clothes. In Buson's day it was not uncommon to hear the fulling blocks of one's neighbors long into an autumn evening. ochikochi ochikochi to utsu kinuta kana here and there here and there beat fulling blocks The original's alternating k and ch sounds, plus the irregular rhythm in the first line of the poem, suggest the syncopated effect of two neighbors beating their clothes, not quite in time with each other. The Japanese may be especially sensitive to Blyth's second kind of onomatopoeia. They have a large number of adverbial phrases in which a basic sound repeats, indicating the character

141 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 127 of a motion or the way in which something happens. Issa is a master at using these, as in Obotaru yurari yurari to torikeri a huge firefly wobbling, wobbling passed by They say Issa made several versions f this poem before settling on the one given here. He worked hard for his simplicities. On the "representation of soul states" Blyth says, "This is always indirect, unconscious, spontaneous. Great poetry depends chiefly for its effect upon this factor." Here are two of his examples, in new translations. The first is by Issa, the second by Santoka: hito chirari people scattered konoha mo chirari the leaves too scattered horari kana and spread... azami azayaka na asa no ame agari thistle brilliant morning rain finished In Issa's poem the repetition of rari, a perfect tense ending, emphasizes the finality of the desolation. In Santoka's the assonance, the fl/z-sounds (i-sounds in the translation) repeating, gives the joyful tone. Alliteration, or consonance, occurs so much in Japanese haiku that finding an example outstanding enough to warrant singling out from the others is difficult. The last two examples give an impression of the frequency of repeated consonant sounds. And the following poem could easily be presented as an example of Blyth's third type of onomatopoeia. I cannot reasonably translate it into English and reproduce the effect of the alliteration in the last line, so I hope you will study the sound of the Japanese trans-

142 128 The Art of Haiku literation. This haiku appears in the early autumn portion of Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior, with the title: tochugin Hummed on the Road aka-aka to hi wa tsurenaku mo aki no kaze redly redly the sun relentless but the autumn wind The aka-aka of the opening line the heat explicitly echoes in the aki...ka... of the final line the cold. The result is a sort of synesthesia in which two aspects of the same sense become confused, finally yielding one almost overwhelming sensation of temperature. Basho presents this same poem in another context with the following preface: Journey's sadness and calmness combined, languid autumn at last somewhat arrived; as might be expected, chafed by the sound of the invisible wind increasingly sad ah, still, as it commingles with the lingering heat... THE WRITTEN HAIKU * VISUAL ASPECTS * Traditionally, the Japanese print haiku in magazines ±± and books in one vertical column of writing, as in the example at the right. This equates to one horizontal ffl line of type in Western languages, thus: ^ old pond... a frog leaps in water's sound A few Japanese haiku poets, notably moderns influenced by contact with Western literature's typographically indicated verse-lines, have experimented with organizing their haiku, traditional or otherwise, into what correspond to Western visual verse-lines. (See & 7jc ^ ^ t

143 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 129 Chapter 8.) But most have continued presenting their poems in print in the traditional single column. However, there is a traditional Japanese equivalent for the visually organized metrical structure of modern Western poetry. When a Japanese poem, particularly a short haiku or tanka, is presented in calligraphy, it is often spread out horizontally, rather than in a single column. Though the syntax of the poem is seldom ignored, the breaks from one column of writing to the next often do not follow the formal verse-lines of the poem. They may be arranged specifically to fit a certain visual situation, to accompany a drawing perhaps, or to accentuate a particularly interesting character in the writing. Or they may make some alternative rhythm in the poem more noticeable. Among the numerous calligraphed examples one might choose, the following poem by Issa recommends itself. Making the horizontal line of romanization our equivalent for the vertical column of Japanese writing, the poem appears in printed works this way (I have added space to show the breaks in the traditional form, which are not indicated visually in the original but would be felt by the reader familiar with the haiku genre; the translation is extremely literal): niwa no cho ko ga haeba tobi haeba tobu garden butterfly as baby creeps flies creeps flies But in a calligraphed scroll including a sketch of his cottage, Issa arranges the poem somewhat like this: niwa no cho ko ga haeba tobi haeba tobu ie mo Issa

144 130 The Art of Haiku garden butterfly as baby creeps flies creeps flies house too Issa Granted, Issa spread the poem across the scroll for visual balance and harmony with the drawing of a cottage (the final line indicates that both the calligraphy and the drawing are his), but he also shows the relationship of writing to speech. Here the movement of the baby and the movement of the butterfly, both in fits and starts, suggest the presentation of each verb independently. Issa has written to build a sort of visual onomatopoeia, making the visual and aural rhythms together reflect the rhythms of the original motions that inspired the poem. Spreading the words out tells the reader how to hear the words, the pacing and emphasis. Since the late 1960s a number of English-speaking haiku poets have constructed each poem "from scratch". They attempt to document visually the precise rhythms they wish to impress upon the reader's ear. While most of their haiku still appear in three lines, there is more freedom within that pattern, as in these examples: in the hot sun still swinging this empty swing Elizabeth Searle Lamb factory whistle the fried egg left staring Raymond Roseliep

145 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 131 she dresses under her arm the moon LeRoy Gorman Several poets have experimented with other presentations: a milkweed seed on this cold spring 1 2 night 3 4 kittens wet 5 Marlene Mountain blowing across the darkening lake the drip echoes unknown before the cave William J. Higginson Cor van den Heuvel As shown in Chapter 5, The Haiku Movement in English, a fair number of North American haiku poets have also experimented at the borders between haiku and concrete, or visual, poetry. It is easy to see that poems can present visually, as well as aurally, images suggested to the mind by words.

146 132 The Art of Haiku In a movement seemingly in the opposite direction, several North American haiku poets have experimented with writing their own haiku in one line. Some of them knew that Japanese haiku are traditionally presented in one column of type, or simply felt that the particular poem they were working on needed to appear in one line. Some have used extra space between words to indicate rhythmical breaks, in effect really breaking their poems into two or three verse-lines, regardless of the horizontal format, while others have perceptions that want no pause, such as these: Before we knew its name the indigo bunting Peggy Willis Lyles a warm wind tickles the dark between my toes Geraldine C. Little And still others present in one compact line a group of words so constructed that the reader is virtually forced to observe a linebreak, though none is indicated, as in this example: at dusk hot water from the hose Marlene Mountain REVISING HAIKU Basho, referring to the craft of haiku, said "On tongue-tip turn a thousand times." Evidently he followed his own advice. When the poem that marked his turn away from the superficial, humorous haikai of his day to the rich and dignified style of his major works first appeared, in 1680, it read this way: kare-eda ni on a barren branch karasu no tomaritaru ya a raven has come to settle... aki no kure autumn dusk

147 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 133 The final version, first published in 1689, reads: kare-eda ni on a barren branch karasu no tomarikeri a raven has perched aki no kure autumn dusk One wearies of finding Western commentator after Eastern commenting that there is no difference in meaning between the two versions. Granted, the basic images are the same. But the shift from -taru ya to -keri achieves four distinct improvements, any one of which would have been worth the effort. First, Basho slightly shortened the extremely long middle line. The first version of the poem has five, ten, and five sounds per line, respectively. It was written during a period when Basho was seriously questioning many aspects of the haikai tradition, and several of his poems written then have irregular structures. (Such irregularities as an extra sound in a line were quite common with many poets at that time, however.) An intermediate version of the poem in which only one sound was changed was printed with an annotation (perhaps by an editor) that shows concern* about the excessive length. Clearly, though, since the ultimate version is only shortened by one sound, this was not the major consideration. Second, while there is little difference in actual verb tense, the change from -taru ya to -keri gives the second line a stronger sense of finality. Some indication of Basho's desire for this may be seen in the intermediate version. It has -tari instead of -taru, yielding a grammatical formation not different in meaning, but sounding a bit like a noun instead of a verb. Third, replacing the kireji ya with the kireji -keri dramatically changes the tension between lines two and three. Ya has somewhat the same effect as an ellipsis. There is a turning from one image to another, but the connection between them is not specified. -Keri also does not specify the connection between the parts of a haiku, but it closes an action, and what follows, if anything, is distinct and separate. It does not represent a turn, but a break.

148 134 The Art of Haiku Fourth, changing from -taru ya (or -taxi ya) to -keri also greatly alters the sound structure of the poem. Even in the first version, the dark fc-sound predominates. Shortening the overall length of the poem and adding anotherfc-sound,in a more dramatic kireji, increases the harshness of the poem and its psychological effect on the reader. (Though the verb root and meaning do not essentially change, I have replaced "settle" with "perch" to somewhat duplicate this effect in my translation of the final version.) Whether Basho revised this poem to bring it closer to his perception of an actual event, or to bring it closer to some ideal, we do not know. We do know that in his day the writing of hokku on classical subjects in Chinese painting was fashionable. This is a poem on the subject "cold crow and barren tree". BashS was a minor student of painting in a rough, Zen-inspired style; he painted more than one picture on which he wrote out this poem. An early version has the poem next to aflockof birds, six or seven of them sitting on branches in various poses, and a later version has the poem and just one bird in both cases Basho's own painting and calligraphy. Yet several writers have debated whether we are to understand one "crow"* or many, while ignoring or dismissing the importance of the revisions this poem underwent. When a great master continues tinkering with a poem this short over a period of nine years, and even tries it out in conjunction with another medium a number of times, perhaps the possibility of improvement is important to him. Among modern American writers there is a similar example of minute revision of a haiku over a period of years. Though not as fine a poem as Basho's kare-eda ni, this poem was also very important to its author's development. But few students of his *I use "raven" in my translation to draw, for the English-speaking reader, on the legacy of Poe, since BashO draws on the traditional combination of barren images in Chinese painting. The karasu, a large, black bird native to Asia, is neither a crow nor a raven.

149 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 135 work have understood, or even looked at, the successive revisions of Ezra Pound's famous "metro poem". In the issue of Poetry magazine for April 1913 it reads: In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd : Petals on a wet, black bough. In the September 1, 1914 issue of Fortnightly Review Ezra Pound's essay "Vorticism" tells, among other things, how he came to write this poem. He explicitly credits the technique of the Japanese hokku in helping him work out the solution to a "metro emotion" and he quotes the poem this way: The apparition of these faces in the crowd : Petals, on a wet, black bough. The main effect of the change is to smooth the rhythm, making the poem less choppy. Grammatically, little has happened; the only difference besides closing up space is the substitution of a comma for space, an interchange fairly common in poetry today, usually going the other way. But Pound wrote another version of the metro poem the one most of us are familiar with. In Lustra, published two years after the "Vorticism" essay, the poem appears this way: In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. Most readers notice the absence of the comma after the word "petals". More important, at the end of the first line Pound changed the colon to a semicolon. A colon tells the reader that one thing restates another in a different way, or that the first simply introduces the second, making one a metaphor for the other. A semicolon shows that two statements are independent of each

150 136 The Art of Haiku other, though they may be related. Thus in the final version of "In a Station of the Metro" both "faces" and "petals" should be understood as real, physical objects, each a core image that stands out against its own background. By revising the poem Pound turned an otherwise sentimental metaphor into a genuine haiku. Our sense of the Paris commuters as delicate, vulnerable life builds, now that we see them come up out of the dark underground into a world of falling petals and spring mist. This is a haiku that Shiki would have been proud to write, and it foreshadows the brilliant juxtapositions of Pound's Cantos. These revisions by Basho and Pound involve subtle shifts of inflection and punctuation. A more common problem for beginning writers of haiku, particularly Westerners, is reducing a potentially dynamic pair of images to a flat simile or metaphor. This usually occurs if one writes a grammatically complete sentence. For instance: "Begging for dinner/ the curl of the cat's tail/ is her meow." This made-up example uses the striking resemblance between the cat's body language and her voice uses it metaphorically. The metaphor limits the reader to hearing the "meow" in the shape of the cat's tail. Reading the poem carefully, we do not have a meowing cat at all. Rather, she curls her tail instead of meowing. However, in most instances of this kind the writer seems to want the reader to see one image and hear the other. How much stronger this poem becomes when we remove the metaphor by deleting "is": begging for dinner the curl of the cat's tail her meow Here we both see the curling tail and hear the meow. Further, we now see the begging in the tail and hear it in the meow. Thus the opening line becomes particularized in the following images, rather than merely serving as a weak introductory phrase. Revising haiku is not limited to changing the grammar or

151 THE CRAFT OF HAIKU 137 removing words that do not sharpen and present the image. Imma Bodmershof published one of her haiku this way in 1962 (translations made with the help of Volker Schubert): RUckkehr aus Sonne una 1 Schnee Come back out of sun and snow ich tappe zur roten Glut. I grope toward the ruddy glow. 1st hier mein Zuhaus? Is this my home? By 1975 it was revised to this: RUckkehr aus Sonne und Schnee Come back out of sun and snow ich tappe zum Herd I grope toward the stove ist hier mein Zuhaus? is this my home? At first glance the initial version might seem preferable a "ruddy glow" seems a stronger image than simply a "stove". But, as the German haiku poet and critic Hajo Jappe has pointed out, a person stumbling into a house snow-blind is unlikely to see anything so subtle as the glow of the coal stove. If we take our time with the later version, we find the heat of the stove before catching sight of it, which is truer to the experience, as well as a more interesting combination of sensations. The revision also makes the poem a bit briefer. (I think it could use more pruning, as could many German haiku, which so far tend to be written in the seventeen-syllable format, and therefore are as long as English-language efforts in that form.) Sometimes one changes a poem to achieve a different image, and therefore present a different experience. This poem by Michael McClintock was first published in Haiku Byways in the spring of 1971: rowing downstream; the red leaves fall in my lap

152 138 The Art of Haiku Later the same year the poem appeared in his collection Light Run as: rowing downstream red leaves swirling behind me Here McClintock has dropped a rather melodramatic image to move to one that seems more natural, and yet carries more motion. We may note that when one rows downstream one faces upstream, and that "behind me" may be taken to mean behind the boat. The leaves swirl behind him, seeming to float upstream. Thus the red leaves, symbolic of decay and death for all their bright color, swirl on in the wake of his passage; but he is going downstream, as they are, some faster and some slower, but all going downstream. Basho, Pound, Bodmershof, McClintock, all worked to clarify, to make their poems increasingly accurate to their perceptions and to the experiences they hoped to give their readers. The craft of haiku comes to this: The language must be utterly clear, stripped of all impediments to sharing.

153 10 Sharing Haiku SHARING HAIKU PERSONALLY By now you are probably ready to start composing haiku, if indeed you have not composed some already. Earlier I said, "The central act of haiku is letting an object or event touch us, and then sharing it with another." When we want to share something with a friend or family member who is right there with us, we usually point to the object, or possibly re-enact the action, that we want to share. An experienced haiku poet might well compose a haiku and recite it on the spot. If the person we wish to share with is not present, perhaps a haiku written or typed as part of a card or note can be left as a message or mailed to the absent person. Haiku poets, when writing to each other, frequently include a recently composed haiku, perhaps at the beginning or end of a letter. In the course of writing this book I received a number. L. A. Davidson, then Recording Secretary of the Haiku Society of America, closed a business letter to me with after all these lighthouses still drawing them crooked 139

154 140 The Art of Haiku which caused me to remember that the Davidsons take their sailboat out at almost every opportunity, and she has been drawing lighthouses for some time. There is a broader expanse of time here than found in most haiku, but the wry tone suggests a senryu quality too (see Chapter 15, Beyond Haiku). By closing a business letter with this allusion to her own avocations the sea and drawing she personalized the letter and gave me a chuckle. It was a delightful light touch at just the right place. Early last spring I received a note from Elizabeth Searle Lamb acknowledging receipt of a package I had sent her. She headed her note with this haiku: a plastic rose rides the old car's antenna spring morning How appropriate to respond to a shipment with mention of a vehicle and the season in which the goods were received. While I do not generally like plastic flowers, this one endeared itself to me immediately. A few years ago Cor van den Heuvel sent me a Christmas card on which he had written this poem, immediately one of my favorites: the little girl hangs all the ornaments on the nearest branch Speaking of Christmas cards, when I was working on this handbook's first draft a number of my friends received letters that ended with a haiku I had composed during the first week of December that year: a yellow paper zig-zags to the floor bare trees

155 SHARING HAIKU 141 In this short image I tried to capture the sense of a writer at work and the passing of the seasons going almost unnoticed. Friends who knew that I was working hard to meet my publisher's deadline would understand if I was not answering their letters or getting out my Christmas cards as quickly as usual. This sort of personal sharing is the ideal use of haiku. We give a friend, in a few words, a capsule image of how we are, what is going on in our lives, how we feel about "things". VARIETIES OF PUBLICATION Writing a haiku and sending it along to one or a few friends in a letter or handwritten cards is one thing, but to pick one and have it printed on a number of cards, or perhaps a letterhead, is another. A few years ago one of America's finest haiku poets sold note paper with some of his haiku printed on them, one to a sheet. They sold fairly well in the little shop that he and his wife ran. I can imagine someone delighting in taking this poem by John Wills as a springboard for writing a short note to a friend: keep out sign but the violets keep on going If you happen to come up with a few particularly noteworthy haiku a local quick print shop can help you to put them on any number of cards, letterheads, or note papers. The idea of having poetry around, visually, in our daily lives has been a major feature of East Asian culture for centuries. Today in Japan one can find haiku and other traditional poems in lovely calligraphy on everyday objects, and on a variety of scrolls,, cards, and specially printed papers made for display. While famous masterpieces by ancient poets often find their way onto such objects, one of my favorite examples is the following poem,

156 142 The Art of Haiku which was given to me by a Japanese friend on a thin towel of the kind used in Japanese kitchens, and often as bandanas and headbands by Japanese laborers. The poem is by a woman of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, who makes a living selling her poems on towels, poem cards, and the like: waga kokoro takayuku toki ya momochidori as my heart goes soaring off ten myriad birds Ogawa Yoshino Takayuku, "goes soaring off", is associated in the old poetry with the hayabusa, a peregrine falcon, a brave bird given to solitary, lofty flights. The phrase momochidori, "ten myriad birds", means "hearing something that sounds as though a hundred thousand... small birds had swarmed together to make a concert" according to one Japanese season word guide. So, the author's heart for which read spirit goes soaring off like a falcon as she hears the cacophony of chirps from a flock of small birds. The contrast is especially striking when we consider that it appears on a towel, one of the more common instruments of everyday life. One of the major satisfactions in writing is having people tell you how much they enjoyed reading your work. A local form of publication putting your writing where the people who see you every day, week, and month will see it frequently brings more satisfaction than national exposure. In a school environment this can mean bulletin boards (in the hall, preferably, and at a level where one's peers can read it), and sheets printed and distributed by some readily available and inexpensive means, such as spirit or stencil duplicators. Often among a small group of friends one or another will have access to inexpensive copying in modest quantities. And if it costs a little bit, so much the better people will concentrate on selecting a few good poems for publication, rather than papering the walls of the world with every weak attempt.

157 SHARING HAIKU 143 Recently, one public use of haiku has puzzled, amused, and sometimes pleased commuters in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, where advertisement-sized placards with short poems on them were placed among the ads on buses. Several of the poems used were haiku, which probably provided a momentary respite from the rat race for a few riders who looked at them long enough to figure out that they were not selling anything. Poetry on the buses may have been a short-lived fad; I have not heard anything about it for a year or more. But it may break out again soon in your community, and if you are writing haiku you might submit some. The placards usually give an address to send comments and inquiries to. There are a number of magazines that publish haiku in the English language. They are 'Tittle magazines" little not so much in size as in circulation. Some that were active in the 1960s and 1970s are mentioned in Chapter 5, The Haiku Movement, and more have undoubtedly started up (and others ceased publication) during the interval between my writing and your reading this. The easiest way to keep up is to get a list of haiku magazines that is updated each year. In English the best such list appears in The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, published and updated every summer. This guide lists some four thousand magazine and book publishers who specialize in every conceivable subject from agriculture to Zen. They are indexed by geography and subject the current edition lists more than twenty-five places to publish haiku. For any writer interested in that first step beyond local publication, The International Directory is a must; it is listed among the resources at the end of this handbook. (Editors or publishers who would like to be listed in the Directory should write to the publisher for a listing form.) Haiku poets who write in languages other than Japanese or English may also find magazines that publish haiku in their own languages, beyond those few mentioned in Chapter 6, Haiku Around the World. Major university libraries, teachers, national and local arts councils and writers' organizations may help you

158 144 The Art of Haiku locate them. Ask around. If you do not find any magazine to your liking, start your own. And bear in mind that several haiku magazines published in English are receptive to work in other languages, especially if provided with an English translation. Some editors will take the trouble to put a notice in their magazines inviting readers who speak your language to write to you, which could perhaps lead to translation and publication of your work. In addition to magazine publication, many haiku poets have published books of their works. Some have waited until they published a number of poems in magazines, which gave them the reassurance that someone else thought their haiku worth publishing, before trying book publication. Others, disdainful perhaps of the bickering about haiku that sometimes erupts in the magazines, or not caring to "submit" their work to the individual judgments of a few editors, have published books on their own to give to friends or persons who they thought would be interested. Some of these books were published by presses that have a special interest in haiku. Some were published by the authors themselves, perhaps with the help of a friend or two. And some were published by cooperative efforts among a group of persons who respected one another's work and contributed time and money toward mutual publication. Most of the more serious publishers of haiku in English are also listed in The International Directory mentioned above. Several books by English-language haiku poets represented in this handbook are listed with the Resources at the back of this book, with their publishers. Book publishers, like magazine editors, come and go. It is a good idea to check the current International Directory to see if they are still in business before sending work to one. In the meantime, not too many serious book publishers will be interested in publishing your haiku if you have had none of them in magazines; for the new haiku poet the magazines are a good place to begin publishing beyond your local area.

159 SHARING HAIKU 145 Even if you wish to publish yourself, and thus retain artistic control over your books, you can use some information. First, you should know the work that is getting published. Subscribing to some of the haiku magazines will help you find that out. Second, you will want to do the best job of publishing your own work that you can for the money you can afford to spend. Often the difference between a good-looking (and well-reviewed) book and a sloppy-looking (and not-reviewed) book is the knowledge and care that went into producing it, rather than the cash expended at the print shop. The International Directory lists a number of books on how to publish your own in the front of the current edition, so I will not go further into it here. But I heartily recommend studying a good book or two on the subject before proceeding. The money spent now will save several times its value in cash later, not to mention the time not wasted and the misunderstandings avoided. Poetry readings have become very popular in the United States during the past decade or two. A poetry reading at a school or public library can usually be set up by a poet or a group of poets simply by asking the librarian and leaving some samples of the works that will be read. It is probably better to have a small group of poets read, rather than one poet alone, if the library does not have a tradition of sponsoring poetry readings. If each poet who is to read has two or three friends come the group will have a respectable audience. Also note that if you plan to give a reading you should practice reading your poems out loud! At first, perhaps, in front of a mirror; then in your home for family and eventually a few friends. Unless you have had experience reading your own work in front of an audience it can be pretty frightening. I know school teachers who, despite performing every day in front of class after class, "freeze up" in front of an audience of a dozen strangers when they try to read their own poems.

160 146 The Art of Haiku HAIKU CLUBS AND ORGANIZATIONS Writers often feel most comfortable sharing their work with pther writers. Literary history abounds with examples. Even the most isolated writers often correspond with several others. Many writers enjoy banding together in groups that can easily meet once a week or month to share and discuss one another's work, and perhaps the work of other writers whom they admire. Such groups may be organized on a fairly formal basis, with officers and bylaws and so on, or may be as simple as the housewives or students who get together in someone's kitchen or dorm room every so often. If you and a neighbor are both interested in haiku, or writing of any kind, you can start a group of two it will probably grow. Often a local group will meet in a municipal or branch library, or will post notices of their meetings there. Y's and adult education centers may serve as focal points for more or less formal writing workshop groups; ask librarians, English teachers, anyone you can think of who might be interested in writing or know people who are, about activities near you. In Japan there are hundreds of haiku clubs, each usually serving members in a particular geographical area, publishing a monthly magazine and often annual anthologies of members' haiku and articles on haiku. In Europe and the Americas, where the geography is broader and the population of serious haiku enthusiasts thinner, there are relatively few clubs that have as much activity as a typical Japanese haiku club. But there is at least one group in the United States that functions in many, if not all, of the ways of a Japanese haiku group. The Haiku Society of America, Inc. was founded in 1968 in New York City. Today it has a few hundred members, scattered all over North America, Europe, and Japan, and publishes a quarterly magazine. The

161 SHARING HAIKU 147 HSA, as it is known to members, has no paid staff, so correspondence is slow, but it will respond to queries with a helpful information sheet about haiku and haiku activities. The HSA is listed among the Resources at the end of this handbook. In addition to the Haiku Society of America, Inc., there is now a Museum of Haiku Literature in Tokyo, with an International Division that tries to keep up with developments world-wide. And there are haiku organizations of one kind or another in some European countries. I have listed all that I know of as this book goes to press in the Resources at the end. (Directors of haiku societies in languages other than Japanese are welcome to send me pertinent information for possible inclusion in future editions of The Haiku Handbook; see my address at the beginning of Resources.) BEYOND HAIKU CIRCLES In this chapter mass-circulation/'slick" magazines and large commercial publishers have not been mentioned. Haiku is slowly growing in the West, but no individuals have been able to attract enough attention to their own work to interest a major commercial publisher. And the editors of magazines outside the haiku community generally know so little about haiku that what they do publish in the genre is often cause for embarrassment. The haiku used by such magazines tend to be "cute" and are viewed by their editors as fillers, not as literature. But the times are changing, and I hope that books of high quality haiku by Western authors will increasingly find their way into bookstores, and eventually into the lists of the largest publishers. Who knows, perhaps quality haiku and other poetry will someday grace the mass media. In the meantime, I will continue to share what I write with my family and a few close friends, and send haiku that seem to strike a responsive chord with them to haiku magazines, and per-

162 148 The Art of Haiku haps even put together a collection of my own, when I think I have enough good ones. I hope you will do the same. Sharing with one's family, friends, and perhaps a public audience, is one of the main purposes of haiku. But it is not the only one. The last chapter, The Uses of Haiku, takes up where this chapter leaves off.

163 TEACHING HAIKU ^^.#^11 &- ff.5^

164

165 11 Haiku for Kids JAPANESE POEMS FOR AMERICAN SCHOOL KIDS? Why use Japanese poems? Because many Japanese poets remain in the "child mind" that sees things as they really are: kugibako no kugi ga minna magatte iru the nail box: every nail is bent Ozaki Hosai (haiku poet, )* There are no metaphors, personifications, or other "literary devices" in this poem. A metaphor or similar technique, no matter how apt, would momentarily distract us from the object itself by referring to something outside the here and now experience. Hosai gives us no confusion of focus, only direct seeing of real things. The Epic Aroma of Thunderous Meters? replaced, by a *Uncredited translations are my own. See Resources at the end of this handbook for works quoted. 151

166 152 Teaching Haiku subtle onomatopoeia that makes words more like things than like thoughts. The "words-as-things" approach works even when the rhythms take on human concern and metaphor shows the human-eye-seeing almost as much as the-thing-seen, like this: dadadan dadadan dadadan dadadan dan dan dan dan dan dan dah dah dah night wind licking the Kurashio crawls over the field &, three bonfires blaze, cra-ra-rackling. swinging flames. dan dan dan dan boys leopard skins round their waists, drumsticks carving the wind &. dan dan dadadan... from "hachijo rhapsody" Kusano Shimpei (b. 1903) tr. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu I sense a directness here unlike much of anything in English after Chaucer until William Carlos Williams rammed us back into life, present, intense. Things not so much described as presented. The most romantic of early twentieth century Japanese poets writes directly from the experience of his senses: came to a mirror shop what a jolt I could've been some bum walking by Ishikawa Takuboku (tanka poet, ) tr. Carl Sesar

167 as did the earliest Japanese poets we know: HAIKU FOR KIDS 153 The sound Of the gourds Struck for the pleasure Of the courtiers Reverberates through the shrine. Anonymous tanka, before 800 A.D. tr. Donald Philippi The Japanese have always been keen observers of all nature, including human nature: "What's this for?" Says the carpenter As he cuts it off. Anonymous senryu, ca tr. R. H. Blyth as are tqday's Japanese schoolchildren: Daddy Daddy is going to his office. I waved my hand "Goodbye." Daddy waved his hand too. My younger sister said, "Goodbye." He waved his hand again. Mommy said, "Goodbye." He didn't wave his hand. Why? Kamiko Yoshiko, age 6 tr. Haruna Kimura

168 154 Teaching Haiku Japanese folk poetry, like that of other peoples, arises from daily life. The feelings of the moment, of the only time we ever truly know, now, come directly through in poems like this: Fog clings To the high mountain; My eye clings To him. Anonymous dodoitsu, early 20th century tr. Eric Sackheim Having studied Japanese poetry seriously, I do not want to muddy the considerable differences among the various genres. But I think there is an important unity in Japanese poetry, and we would do well to capitalize on it, rather than dote on the superficial formal characteristics of one poorly understood genre such as the haiku. So, why use Japanese poems in the American classroom? Because they come directly from the experience of the poets, and usually steer clear of the metaphorical cover-up so characteristic of much popular Western poetry.* Because of the directness and intensity of many Japanese poems, readers and hearers can understand them easily (unless they happen to name unfamiliar objects). Any response a child or adult makes to them cannot be called "wrong" most of these poems do not require esoteric explanations. Teachers are freed to help children find their own understandings of these poems, just as they must find their own understandings of the world, which also requires more paying attention than esoteric knowledge. The main exception to this statement is the so-called "Court Poetry". Typical of our involvement with Asian literature, the most indirect kind of Japanese poetry has got most attention from Western scholars e.g., Brower and Miner's Japanese Court Poetry. Most of Arthur Waley's work in Japanese literature also deals with the Court Poetry and the culture that produced it.

169 HAIKU FOR KIDS 155 The haiku and its companion genre senryu* demonstrate these unique characteristics of Japanese poetry at their most intense concentration. In them metaphorical thinking, seeing something as having the qualities of something else and using that perception as a descriptive technique, seldom appears. Often things and events do illuminate one another, but never one at the expense of the other. Haiku and senryu depend for their effect primarily upon the single significant image clearly and directly presented, or upon a striking juxtaposition of two such images. Haiku are almost never philosophical or didactic in intent; senryu often are, but the better senryu teach in the same way parables teach, with pictures from life. And the best haiku seem to come from a mind as clear as a mountain spring. Over ten years ago, when I began visiting schools to lead writing workshops, I was reluctant to use haiku in the classroom. The lack of readily available quality translations gave me pause. Also, I felt that the word "haiku" had been so contaminated by the number of sentimental five-seven-fives produced in schools that I did not want to be associated with the term in that environment, though I had edited Haiku Magazine for a few years. Finally, I did not wish to be drawn into discussions of "the haiku form" terminology which I believe has been mainly responsible for many Westerners' poor understanding of the haiku genre. These problems kept me from presenting haiku to American schoolchildren for almost a year, unless cornered by the expectations of some schoolteacher or administrator. When so cornered, I usually fell into the pedant's last resort, declaiming what a haiku is not. However, the appearance of The Haiku Anthology: English Language Haiku by Contemporary American and Canadian Poets in 1974 helped me to find a way to circumvent the bull without being gored on the horns of misunderstood terminology. The fol- *The Glossary at the back of this handbook gives definitions for all the names of Japanese poetic genres used in this chapter.

170 156 Teaching Haiku lowing is the diary of the first happy haiku day in my Poets-inthe-Schools career, with added examples from other days, other schools. MY FIRST HAPPY HAIKU DAY IN SCHOOL: A DIARY Today will be different. I will simply present the haiku itself. By presenting the poems themselves, and helping children to see how they are constructed, I will give them the experience of haiku without causing the confusion that using the word "haiku" would bring about. (It is important to pick poems that do not require explanations of the words or images; having a book with excellent haiku written by members of the students' own culture makes this easier.) First class: Immediately after walking in, I wait for their full attention, then explain that I am about to read a number of very short poems. The poems are so short that if they miss one word they will miss the whole poem. I also say that they can respond to the poems in any way they want to, that there is no correct or incorrect response, and that I will pause at the end of each poem for them to laugh, cry, giggle whatever they want to do. I then read them about thirty-five poems from The Haiku Anthology. I choose those with extremely clear, sense-appealing images, some quite traditional, like: Snow falling on the empty parking lot: Christmas Eve... Eric W. Amann I also deliberately mix in a number that seem quite mysterious, whether through choice of image, juxtaposition, or use of

171 HAIKU FOR KIDS 157 language, and carefully include several with modern, city images, such as: Moonlit sleet In the holes of my Harmonica David Lloyd In the laundermat she peers into the machine as the sun goes down. Sydell Rosenberg the old barber sweeping hair into the giant bag James Tipton an empty wheelchair rolls in from the waves Cor van den Heuvel The silence in moon light of stones Virginia Brady Young I try to pick a number that rely on senses other than sight, or on more than one sense: Under ledges and looking for the coolness that keeps touching my face. Foster Jewell

172 158 Teaching Haiku crickets... then thunder Larry Wiggin In all of this, I read very slowly, concentrating on careful enunciation and giving full weight to both punctuation- and linebreak-indicated pauses, leaving space between poems for response. The reading goes over well, the children laughing, squirming, or wide-eyed at almost every poem. The thirty-five poems take only seven to ten minutes. After reading the poems, I tell the kids that these poems are all made up of "images" and without further explanation I ask them to tell me what images are. Very quickly, as I write their responses on the board, we have several senses listed, and such phrases as "in your mind", "thinking about pictures", and "in your imagination" come out. I pounce on this last, immediately writing IMAGINATION out across the blackboard in foot-high capitals. Then I say, circling and underlining the letters as I go, "Imagination is T I M A G N A T I 0 N in the country' I M A G N A T I O N of images'!" ' I M A G N A T I O N The aptness of this mnemonic shocks even me. I go on to ask where images can come from and, after a little prodding, I get them to agree with me that there are basically three sources: 1. the senses images within the range of here and now vision, hearing, touch, and so on. 2. the memory images stored in the mind, whether from personal experience or from books, movies, etc.

173 HAIKU FOR KIDS the fantasy images invented in the mind, usually by combining material from the senses and/ or the memory. I also point out that I am making a distinction between the words "fantasy" and "imagination". While "fantasy" refers only to those new images invented in the mind, I think of "imagination" as referring to all mental images. All this, and only twenty minutes have elapsed since the start of the lesson! And, more important, each child seems to be actively following the whole thing, delighting in the poems, more than half of them contributing to the lively discussion and giving examples of new thought in its most joyful mode. It is important for me to remember that all this discussion, covering topics that could well be the subject of a seminar in a graduate school writing program, arose spontaneously from the children and from me in a live atmosphere of curiosity, high energy, and delight. I must keep in mind for the future that the particular details of the discussion, of the terminology, have to arise from the children, and that any guiding hand I supply must come from honest interaction with their minds as equals, or I will sap the energy of this interchange. I was writing their words on the board. To the writing. To make sure that everyone has a real working knowledge of what an image is, I suggest that we make up a poem containing two images which connect in some strange way. Asking anyone to call out an image, I get "The Washington Monument", which I put on the board as I wonder where we could possibly go with that. I ask for another image to pair with that, one which will "draw sparks" from it. Given as good as asked, and with a war whoop I present their handiwork to them on the board: The Washington Monument The Lincoln Tunnel Asking the kids what makes this a good poem produces immediate answers like "They're both presidents' names." "One goes up, the other you look at the inside."

174 160 Teaching Haiku Overjoyed at their understanding, but still wondering if we can cool it a little bit and get a more or less straight haiku-like poem from the class, I ask them for images that are not major landmarks, and momentarily two of the quieter kids respond: a desert island a single flower At this point I know it is time to shut up and let them write. I encourage them to write anything, so long as it is just images. Here are a few of the more haiku-like images that resulted from working with four classes of fourth and fifth graders that first day: The big eyed owl hooing in the dark. Big skinny frogmen looking for treasure divers. A man with so much hair you can't see his head A bag with a head in it An old jukebox A funny record An overweight dinosaur A flattened out archeologist Reading a book Remembering what it was about A cactus plant. A dark pink flower. As with any lesson plan used frequently, I have deliberately varied my approach somewhat through the day, and of course each class has its own personality to add to the mix. Trying the same basic approach with sixth graders in another school produced work like this: The tired old doctor The dusty girl

175 HAIKU FOR KIDS 161 The sound of a light bulb when it's off. And I took the same plan to a middle school, where working with seventh and eighth graders produced these: The fire flickering in the distance consuming everything in sight. old leather wallet luxurious apartment Of course, some of the poems quoted above would not qualify as haiku according to a strictly traditional view of the genre. But many would. More important in terms of a teaching objective, children have been actively engaged in using highly imagistic language, and doing so with a reasonable understanding of what they were doing with pleasure. In each of these classes several students wrote lists of images or more complex, layered images. I did not discourage them as long as they were writing images, not wanting to interfere with the energy of the writing and with their pleasure in it. I should note the two remaining features of each session on writing images. First, I as writer/teacher write when my students write. This helps them to understand that writing is an adult activity (and therefore one they are more likely to value and wish to participate in), and gives them a sense that they are colleagues with the teacher instead of workers under the direction of a classroom foreman. (I do, usually, write something down quickly and then move around the room quietly helping the occasional student who cannot think of anything to write. This often simply involves pointing to some thing in the room or out the window, and asking them if they can capture that image in words.) Second, since the poems are short, there is usually time for everyone to read at least one aloud. I ask them to circle or star the one they like best, and have each person read one, beginning

176 162 Teaching Haiku with volunteers, and moving to the shyer ones after others have read theirs. If students are painfully shy, I will sometimes read theirs to the class myself often theirs are among the best. Somewhere in the middle of the reading I will usually read one I have just written, if I think it will not take up so much time as to prevent us from hearing all of the students. ANOTHER POET'S APPROACH Poet Ron Padgett noticed one particular feature of many classical Japanese haiku, and communicated his excitement about it to a group of students. Here is how he describes the experience: I explained to the students that there were haiku I liked, and that what I liked about them among other things was the way they often surprised you at the end. There would be two lines, usually about nature, and then a final line which at first didn't seem to have anything much to do with the first two lines. To demonstrate this I drew two straight parallel lines across the blackboard: these represented the first two lines of the poem. "Make them about nature, make them 'pretty' or 'nice' things about nature." Under these I drew a third line. "Make this last line a complete surprise, something that has nothing to do with the first two lines." I also told them to forget about counting syllables. The extemporaneous examples I then made up gave the kids a strong slant down which they slid into their own poems. A greater variety of examples at this point would have lent a greater variousness to the results. Here are some of the haiku written by fifth graders during that class period:

177 HAIKU FOR KIDS 163 Silent are the trees blowing in the wind Donald Duck drowning in Lake Erie Flowers in the garden They are beautiful Time for bed It's raining out the rivers overflow and I'm listening to the radio Little red roses popping out of the ground a car blowing up It is summer The river is flowing My friend has blond hair Perhaps the assignment worked so well because its simplicity and economy suggest the simplicity and economy of the haiku. In any case, the kids took great glee in setting up the first two lines so they could detonate them in the last line. In the haiku parody I wrote during that period, I seemed to be trying to detonate all the bad haiku I had read and the tedious way haiku had been taught. I took line- and syllable-counting to its extreme: "First: five syllables / Second: seven syllables / Third: five syllables" count 'em. Kids are very good at pleasing their teachers, as thousands of bulletin boards full of five-seven-fives attest. Like the kids, I get more excitement from writing about my friend's blond hair or a dark pink cactus flower than from examples such as "Sweetly

178 164 Teaching Haiku blows the wind / through the beautiful flowers / of the spring garden." which is better than most of what inhabits those bulletin boards. If our students are to become excited about haiku it will help if we are also excited about it. But it will help more if they find the haiku exciting in itself, because it gives them a chance to express and share their own perceptions, which perhaps we should accord the courtesy of receiving, rather than trying to impress our own upon them.

179 12 A Lesson Plan That Works by Penny Harter* SHARING A CONCERN Most teachers would have a hard time doing what Bill did in the lesson presented in the last chapter. Mainly, they would not have the background in haiku that he acquired through several years of study. That background, and his experience as a writer in a ' classroom, rather than a teacher, also allowed him to jettison the "haiku objective" when something else equally interesting was going on. His main purpose was to get kids to write and think in *Poet and fiction writer Penny Harter has taught writing in many public schools in New Jersey over the past several years. Asked to help high school teachers present haiku, she came up with this lesson plan, since used in two districts. 165

180 166 Teaching Haiku terms of images, and he was not too concerned with whether or not the products of his sessions were indeed haiku. But what of the teacher who does want students to learn what a haiku "really is" and be able to write some? I have tried to work up a lesson plan that any teacher can use, at almost any grade level. I have also developed and used media in many of my lessons, so I worked out ways that media could be effectively incorporated into the lesson plan. I had an opportunity to test the results of using my lesson plan in regular senior high school English classes. To demonstrate the effectiveness of using this plan I also gave the students tests on cognitive knowledge of haiku and skill at writing haiku both before and after the lesson. These tests resulted in a number of verses which were then given to Bill to judge anonymously, and without knowing which had come from pre-tests and which from post-tests. Obviously, very few of the pre-test efforts resembled haiku. However, not only were a large proportion of the post-test efforts recognizable as haiku, several of them were of publishable quality. Here is a sampling of the results; remember, these are not written in a workshop situation, but in a test! I am not normally in favor of asking for this kind of creative effort in a testing situation. In this case I explained to the students that we were testing the lesson plan, rather than them individually. The students did not receive grades as a result of this test. Lavender flowers against the sky petals soft as air. The old fisherman mending his nets throughout the night. Wet sand tumbling back into the sea. Butterfly floats through the air. Cloudy autumn sky. A white night shadows of snow on the ground. Seagulls flying over ruined sand castles carried by the wind.

181 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 167 Hitchhiker He turns as I speed past Driving alone A baby cries at the window, a hearse passes by. A boat on the water after the hurricane Discarded blossoms litter the path An old woman sweeps. The students who received this lesson also did well on the cognitive parts of the test, both when it was given the following day, and when it was given again three weeks later. The teacher whose classes I taught in this experiment has since adopted my lesson plan and regularly teaches haiku to her creative writing students. She has also begun writing haiku herself, and both she and some of her students have had their haiku published by reputable haiku magazines. The poems written in her classes were sent to the magazines as regular submissions, and were not identified as student writing. I am not sure that publication of writing by students should be the goal of every literature class, but publication certainly does suggest that the students learned to appreciate the genre they were studying. The editors who have accepted work from such students have given them grades that will mean something to those students long after the memory of a particular quiz or test grade has faded. A HAIKU LESSON The following lesson plan gives complete instructions for a fortyfive-minute class in haiku. You may modify the lesson to suit your own needs and ways of presenting material. Read your students the very short poems that follow. Read slowly, concentrating on careful enunciation and sufficient

182 168 Teaching Haiku pauses for line breaks, without making the reading unnatural. Pause for a longer time between poems. The reading of these will take about five minutes. Tell them to just listen and enjoy, using their imaginations. These poems are so short that every word counts, and if students miss one word they may miss the entire poem. When you pause at the end of each poem, students may want to laugh, cry, giggle... or just have a quiet feeling inside, of joy or sorrow, of humor or horror. Billboards... wet in spring rain... Eric W. Atnann Holding the water, held by it the dark mud. William J. Higginson someone's newspaper drifts with the snow at 4 a.m. Jack Cain Broken kite, sprawled on a sand dune, its line caught in the beach plum... Elizabeth Searle Lamb Sunset dying on the end of a rusty beer can... Gary Hotham

183 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 169 A Hallowe'en mask floating face up in the ditch, slowly shakes its head. Clement Hoyt Fallen horse flies hovering in the vulture's shadow Geraldine Clinton Little Autumn twilight: the wreath on the door lifts in the wind. Nicholas Virgilio (All from The Haiku Anthology: English Language Haiku by American and Canadian Poets, edited by Cor van den Heuvel (Doubleday, 1974), as are others not attributed to students.) After reading these poems, tell the students that the poems are all made up of images, that the images create the emotions they had as they listened to the poems. Then ask the students what they think an image is. Write their responses on the blackboard. These responses will probably include "pictures, in your mind, in your imagination". Try to get as many students as possible to tell you something about the poems, and what they think an image is. After getting several responses on the board, tell the students that in writing an image is a group of words which presents an object or objects, and possibly some action, that appeals to the senses. The things named in an image can be seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted; or the reader may get from an image a sense of temperature, pain, or movement. There are more than five senses. Here is a haiku showing the sense of movement, as well as a number of others. How many can your students find in it?

184 170 Teaching Haiku walking the snow-crust not sinking sinking Anita Virgil Write down the senses, starting with "movement", as they say them. If there are any responses that you or members of the class do not understand, let. the student responding explain. Accept and record on the board all answers that seem to have valid explanations. (I have no trouble accepting "smell", for example. See the discussion of this poem in Chapter 9, The Craft of Haiku.) Now ask where images come from. Again, write their responses on the board. When you have responses that seem to fit the categories "here and now", "memory", and "fantasy" or "made-up in the mind", point out that these are the three sources. "Imagination" will probably come up point out that "imagination" has the word "image" in it, and can refer to all three categories. One of the powers of poetry, of haiku especially, is to create emotions by connecting two or more images together in new and strange ways. Read aloud these two examples of poems that do this, written by students: the little bird hopping across the parking lot empty fish tank bubbles Ask the students what two images come together in each of the poems you have just read. One way of expressing these is: (1) A bird hopping across asphalt instead of grass. (2) A tank full of water, with bubbles to give fish air when there are no fish.

185 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 171 Now ask students to write some of their own. They can remember some images, or take some images from something right here and now, or make some up. If anyone asks what to do just encourage them by saying something like: "Just go ahead and write a few poems like the ones we've been talking about." Write some yourself in a workshop the leader leads by going ahead. If the students see you writing (1) they will realize that you are serious, and (2) they will be a little less likely to bother you with unnecessary questions. Besides, writing yourself will distract you from worrying about those who do not start right away, but need some time to shift gears from taking in to putting out. It is okay if a few do not start writing right away. When they see the others writing they will get to it. Allow about five to seven minutes. Then ask some to read one or two of theirs aloud. Have them point out the images in their own poems, noting whether they have one or two, or more. They should be particularly conscious of images that are alike, or contrast sharply. If you feel the need, you may underscore the use of two contrasting or similar images with the following examples: Into the blinding sun... the funeral procession's glaring headlights. Nicholas Virgilio Muttering thunder... the bottom of the river scattered with clams Robert Spiess in the hotel lobby the bare bulb of a floor lamp shines down on its distant base Cor van den Heuvel

186 172 Teaching Haiku All of these poems are haiku. There are a few more things about haiku that students should know. The haiku presents the event in an image, SHOWS us what happened, does not tell us about it or tell us what emotion to feel. "I was sad / when I saw / the dead cat." is not a haiku. This is: dead cat... open mouthed to the pouring rain Michael McClintock It shows us the cat, and that makes us feel the sadness. All of these poems tell of some specific event or observation. Haiku are not generalities. Remind students that a haiku is short, usually fewer than ten words. It should not rime, usually, for that makes it sound like a sort of nursery rime, and takes our attention away from what the haiku has to show us. Occasionally a haiku will rime, and if the sound of the riming does not detract from the meaning of the poem that is okay. But deliberate riming usually makes the writer choose a word that is not accurate to the image, which is more important than getting in any particular sound. You and your students may have heard that a haiku has to have seventeen syllables. Traditional Japanese haiku have usually contained about seventeen onji. But an onji in Japanese is not the same thing as a syllable in English. Onji are all quite short, and take about the same length of time to say, like the syllables in the English word po-ta-to. But in English syllables vary greatly in length, and some are quite long, like wound, plough, cough, or wrenched. In English haiku usually have fewer than seventeen syllables, though some poets do write them that way. And haiku in English are usually written in three lines, though they have also been written in one, two, or more than three lines. Point out that haiku poets usually avoid similes or metaphors.

187 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 173 If we say "smoke rises like a twisted snake into the sky" we are using a simile; if we say "a twisted snake of smoke rises into the sky" we are using metaphor. In either case, a person hearing or reading this is likely to make a picture of a snake in the mind's sky, and that is not what the poem is really talking about. A haiku poet might say something simpler, like "Smoke rises, twisting, into the sky." Tell students that in classical Japanese haiku one is required to indicate the season by a special word called a kigo, or "season word". Using "deer" or "moon" or "night of stars", for example, would indicate that the events of the poem took place in autumn. Haiku in English often show the season, but so far American, Canadian, and other poets writing in English have not tried to agree on a fixed set of season words, perhaps because the seasons vary more over the range of geography in which people speak English than they do in Japan. Finally, tell students that the traditional Japanese haiku grew out of the haikai-no-renga, or comic linked poem, in which two or more poets would participate in an add-on, pass-around image game. Poets would gather to have renga parties. On the way to the party each poet would compose a hokku, or starting verse, in case he should be called upon to begin the renga. The starting verse had to contain references to the season and the place of composition. This explains the "here and now" feeling of most haiku. If the poet was not asked to begin the renga his hokku would be lost. But in later times some hokku were published independently in collections of haikai-no-renga. These became the first independent haiku. Now have students try to write some more haiku. Remember to have them ask themselves these key questions as they write each one: 1. Is it brief? 2. Does it present one or two clear images, with no metaphors or similes?

188 174 Teaching Haiku 3. Does the image, or do the images coming together, create an emotion in the reader without telling the reader what emotion to feel? Finish the lesson by inviting whoever wants to to read their haiku to the class. Perhaps ask them to pick what they think is their best, and read it. USING MEDIA TO TEACH HAIKU The teacher who is comfortable with them can use a number of school media in addition to the chalkboard in the haiku lesson above. For example, write individual haiku to be used as examples on acetate with appropriate markers and show them on a screen with an overhead projector. Be sure to vary which poems you use from time to time, or, if you wish to make a permanent set of transparencies, obtain permission. Making a permanent copy of published material to use over and over again is a copyright violation. Many authors will be glad to grant permission if you ask in advance. They can usually be contacted through the publisher of the book in which their work appears, including this one. Or you can write the author or the editor of a book directly. (The address of the author of this handbook is listed at the beginning of Resources at the back.) An opaque projector can be used to show pages from books. You might want to make up a transparency showing some of the Japanese words in the lesson plan. A striking way to use media in teaching haiku has produced excellent results for me. I often use a group of twenty to thirty slides, most of them color photographs taken on vacations and the like, at the end of the lesson where I ask the students to continue writing haiku. These slides of objects, scenes from nature, and some of animals and people, provide the students with

189 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 175 moments, objects, or events to write about. The writing is done simultaneously with the showing of the slides, not afterward. I tell the students that they are going to see a number of slides that will be full of things for them to write images from. There will be some slides that give a single image (for example, close-up shots of water in a stream), and some that bring two or more images together (like a cat on a windowsill watching a bird at the feeder). I show the slides, going through the whole set once so they can decide which ones they might like to write about. Then I go back to the beginning and proceed more slowly, stopping for a longer time on the five or six that several class members want to write about. The students can write about any slides they wish to along the way or about any other images they have in mind. I go back and forth through the whole set of slides a number of times. During the first showing, in particular, both the students and I usually comment on which pictures are especially striking, and would make good subjects for haiku. I encourage them to notice the slides which bring together two usually related objects in new ways. And occasionally students will read aloud what they have written. At the end of the class I encourage any who wish to do so to read their haiku aloud. This may be done with the lights still partially out, to help everyone recall the slides, and to lend an air of informality and even anonymity to the readings. If you do not take pictures yourself, you can often find colleagues who will be glad to lend you slides of their own. It is a good idea to specify that you want pictures of natural and/or interesting objects, and that if they have a strong center of attention they will be better for your purpose. Another way to provide visual stimulation, other than projection media, is to find some large-format books with pictures that could serve the purpose. Some Sierra Club books, for example, have very good pictures. You can walk slowly around the room,

190 176 Teaching Haiku showing pictures to a few students while the others are writing images from their memories or fantasies. Gradually you can cover the whole room this way, so that all will have a chance to work out of their own images in their minds and from the pictures you show them. (This also gives you a good excuse for moving around the room, and you can see how people are doing as you go around.) If you find the lesson takes longer than you expected, you can do it without the pictures one day, and then remind the class of the haiku on another day and show pictures for them to write to at that time. Classroom media should be used by teachers who are comfortable with them. They should be used unobtrusively, so that they seem a part of the natural flow of the lesson. Do not break the lesson up into several small segments of different media, hopping from one to another. Use the transparencies where they are convenient to you. If you half-darken the room for them, then it will be easy to slip into the darker conditions ideal for showing slides. There is no need to come back to full lighting in the middle of the lesson, between the last transparencies and the slides, if you use both. However, full lighting is needed for the chalkboard work at the beginning of each lesson. RESULTS As the examples from my lessons show, students can learn to write haiku. More important, they will learn to write strong, interesting images through these methods. It is not hard to show, in a short story, for instance, examples of sharp images, and note how they help to set the scene, move the action, or portray character. You do not have to tell the reader that a person who is standing biting a fingernail and tapping a foot is nervous.

191 A LESSON PLAN THAT WORKS 177 Writing haiku can have many functions in life as well as in the classroom. Several of these uses for haiku form the subject of the final chapter of this handbook. But the important thing about writing haiku is that it makes us look at things, hear things, notice the touch and taste of things in ways that will connect us with the world around us, and help us articulate and share our experiences and perceptions with the people around us.

192

193 Part F< our BEFORE AND BEYOND HAIKU 5TC*'* * ^1 ^fch^ ^ e =^SJS5

194

195 13 Before Haiku TRADITIONAL JAPANESE POETRY AND TANKA A variety of genres makes up the whole of traditional Japanese poetry, each with its own characteristic content and formal structure. As in other traditional poetries, the content of each genre is almost as "fixed" as the form. In English poetry the name "ballad" suggests not only a certain metrical pattern but a certain type of content, for example, a story. In Japanese the word dodoitsu refers to a folk-song of work or love in a meter of seven-sevenseven-five onji (approximately), and so on. In the beginning of Chapter 8, The Form of Haiku, I described the origins of tanka rhythm in the choka, and presented examples of the two main stanzaic patterns, the five-seven / five-sevenseven pattern common in the ManyOshU, and the five-seven-five / seven-seven pattern that became prominent later on. But the tanka differs from other genres of Japanese poetry as much by content as by form. If the sonnet was the typical vehicle for the love poetry of Italian and English courtiers during the Renaissance, the tanka served a like function during the five centuries of the Nara and Heian Periods in Japan (taken together, roughly 181

196 182 Before and Beyond Haiku 700 to 1200 A.D.). However, while the sonnet seems usually to be a poem in praise of an unattainable love, the tanka was the main form in which notes were written and actually sent from lover to lover, expressing desire or gratitude. The tanka was (and is) also used to express appreciation of nature in fact this was among its first uses. Here is an anonymous example from the ManyOshU: G-umi ni shima mo aranaku ni unabara no tayutau nami ni tateru shirakumo on the great sea there are no islands on surging waves of the ocean plain stand white clouds But from the late seventh century the ManyOshU records tanka like this, written by Princess Nukuda, "thinking of the Emperor Tenji": kimi matsu to waiting for you waga koioreba in longing... waga yado no making the blinds sudare ugokashi of my house move aki no kaze fuku autumn wind blows And the ManyOshU also contains a number of examples of tanka exchanges, or notes sent back and forth, often between lovers. As the lives of the courtiers became more and more refined, particularly after the capital moved from Nara to Heian-kyo (present-day Kyoto) in the latter part of the eighth century, literature and the arts became the main means of expressing refinement. Ivan Morris, in The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, notes one of the main features of the culture that produced The Tale of Genji in these words:... Their civilization was, to a quite remarkable extent, based on aesthetic discrimination and, with the rarest of

197 BEFORE HAIKU 183 exceptions, every gentleman and lady was an amateur performer in one or more of the arts. Among the arts poetry was essential. The composition, exchange, and quotation of poems was central to the daily life of the Heian aristocracy, and it is doubtful whether any other society in the world has ever attached such importance to the poetic versatility of its members While the aristocratic society of Heian-kyo put great store in refinement, a combination of knowledge of the art of the past and ability to create art on the spot, it also lived close to nature. The tanka in praise of nature continued, but natural imagery now more than before became the vehicle for expressing human concerns. Two major poets of the KokinshU, an anthology compiled early in the tenth century, provide examples: omoikane thought unendurable imo-gari yukeba and going to her place fuyu no yo no the winter night's kawakaze samumi river-wind so chill chidori naku nari the plovers are crying Ki no Tsurayuki With the affair on my mind, went on a visit; from the road seeing the burnt-over fields, composed: fuyugare no nobe to waga mi o omoiseba moete mo ham o matamashi mono o thinking myself a withered winter field, though burning, still one who would await the spring Lady Ise Both poems compare features of the winter landscape with their authors' feelings. Tsurayuki's passion drives him out into

198 184 Before and Beyond Haiku the chill wind of the river; his unendurable thoughts of his lover rise from the heat of his passion just as the cries of the plovers rise from the cold of the wind. And Lady Ise's vision of the winter fields reminds her of her love-wracked body; her passion has consumed her so that she almost wonders if she would have entered into the relationship had she known the force of it beforehand. She burns with it, and wonders if she will be rejuvenated in the spring, like the fields burnt-over to stimulate spring growth. TANKA REFORM AND OTHER GENRES This short survey cannot give even a hasty impression of the shifting currents throughout several centuries of tanka composition. From the Kokinshu, completed about 914 A.D., to the Shinzoku kokinshu, completed in 1439, there are twenty-one imperial anthologies, with a total of about 33,000 poems, virtually all tanka. And the anthologies represent only the best-known and most fashionable works of their eras; just a portion of all the courtly tanka composed throughout the period made their way into these collections. All through the long history of Japanese poetry tastes and styles have shifted, become more or less static, and then shifted again. Social, political, and economic factors have played a strong role in this process. But so have certain poets, who from time to time came on the scene and turned their backs on the fashionable concerns of their day to write in new ways. And new genres arose to challenge the supremacy of the tanka, once synonymous with waka, "Japanese poetry". In this survey of the tanka I will mention only one more "court" poet, the Priest Saigyo ( ), before skipping to modern developments in the genre. According to Earl Miner, the Japanese love the Priest Saigyo best of all the court poets. He also

199 BEFORE HAIKU 185 had perhaps the least to do with the court. I do not mean that Saigyo did not grow up in the court tradition. His family was renowned for military prowess, and he became a captain of guards in the highest levels of the court. He also served one of the most powerful families at court, and learned the art of poetry from the very best poets of the time. He left the court at the age of twenty-three to become a Buddhist monk. The aristocracy were shocked. He was young, gifted, and well placed. But instead of building this combination into a brilliant political career, he took the discipline of his military background and the art of poetry with him into the life of a religious. Saigyo also literally left Heian-kyo to live, for various periods of time, in one religious retreat or another, and to travel more widely than any other poet of his time. In his travels Saigyo looked at the humble people, whose lives were unimaginable to those caught up in the brilliance of the court. He depicted their lives and their surroundings in ways that at first shocked, but later changed the sensibilities of the rest of the court poets. And though his poetry is deeply imbued with Buddhism and classical learning, not since the ManyOshU had a poet so sincerely celebrated nature for its own sake. The compilers who began working on the Shinkokinsha little more than a decade after his death included more of Saigyo's poems than any other poet's. In viewing the activities of the common people, Saigyo can be almost brutally objective, as when he sees "divers in the open sea taking abalone": iwa no ne ni going toward kataomomuki ni the rocky bottom namiukite through waves awabi o kazuku diving for abalone ama no muragimi the head fisherman Though his Buddhist understanding decreed it a sin to take the life of any creature, and many of his poems on clamming, shrimp

200 186 Before and Beyond Haiku fishing, and the like lament the sinful nature of the work, Saigy5 maintained sympathy for the workers. This tension, between the demands of Buddhism to give up all attachment to the world and a love of the deep richness of life, pervades much of Saigyo's poetry. He states it openly in his most famous verse: kokoro naki mi ni mo aware wa shirarikeri shigi tatsu sawa no aki no yugure even heartless my body must know how touching: snipe rise from the marsh in the autumn nightfall The point is that no matter how much one Saigyo may seek to extinguish one's feelings, the simplest observation of nature will deeply move precisely the sort of person who tries to "abandon this world of illusion". Little wonder that Basho loved so well the verses of Saigyo, the traveling poet whose skill was only exceeded by his dedication to Buddhism and his empathy with nature. The tanka, once the characteristic poetry of the aristocracy, continues down to the present day. But only under the pressure of European influence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did it flare up with a brightness that could again compare with the great ages of the ManyOshU, the KokinshU, and the Shinkokinshu. As the political and economic power in Japanese society shifted from the aristocracy to the warrior class, and more gradually to the rising "townsmen", literature also changed. Renga replaced tanka as the dominant poetic genre, and later developed into the haiku and senryu in turn. Literature became more popular in tone, and the refinement of the court was replaced by the wit of the town. Where courtly tanka poets had used natural imagery to express their passions the townsmen used similar imagery in a sort of tanka-manque', called kyoka, to present the funnier sides of their love life. In the latter part of the eighteenth century books

201 BEFORE HAIKU 187 and special collections of wood-block prints with kyoka were published to suit the taste of the times. The old tanka and Chinese styles of painting did not die away. But, as has happened a number of times in Japanese literary history, the new vulgar take-off arose for a while to equal its staid ancestor in social, if not artistic, importance. Utamaro, one of the great artists of the wood-block print, made several series of prints which had kyoka incorporated into them. Here is an example from a book called Momochidori kyoka awase, or "many-bird kyoka contest": sadamenaki fickle one kimi ga kokoro no with the heart of a mura suzume village sparrow tsui ni ukina no suddenly scandals hatto tatsuran will start to take off Aya no Orinushi The pen name fits the verse; Aya no Orinushi means "Master of Leash-Weavers". Perhaps the author's wit will be powerful enough to prevent the "sparrow" and the scandals from taking off. Kyoka never achieved the staying power of senryu, which seemed to penetrate every tavern and teahouse for several decades. But the relationship between tanka and kyoka parallels that between haiku and senryu. The popular tone of kyoka mirrored the rising self-consciousness of the common people. However, only in the modern era has the tanka, with all its seriousness and passion, become the property of the mass of the Japanese people. THE MODERN TANKA REVIVAL Masaoka Shiki ( ), who almost single-handedly preserved the haiku from oblivion in the face of the Western literature pouring into Japan in the late nineteenth century, tried to

202 188 Before and Beyond Haiku perform a like service for the tanka. While Shiki had advocated a clean pictorial style in haiku, and admitted modern images and modern sensibility, his main inspiration for the tanka reforms he proposed was the simplicity of the ManyOsha. The ManyOsha had been an anchor for several attempts at tanka reform earlier, but Shiki tended to write tanka even simpler and less romantic in tone than his own haiku. Even when Shiki gives us a portrait of himself in fatigue and no doubt pain the language is excruciatingly spare, devoid of romance, almost chill in its objectivity: cha yo o komete mono kakiwaza no kutabire ni hi o fukiokoshi cha o nomi ni keri tea crowding night weary with the work of writing things blew the fire to life and drank some tea Saito Mokichi ( ) never knew Shiki, but came upon a collection of Shiki's work, Take no sato uta ("Songs of a Bamboo Village"), and decided to become a poet. Mokichi was a great student of the ManyOsha, and completed a five-volume work on the most famous poet in it, Kakinomoto Hitomaro. What he admired in the ManyOsha was the immediacy of its images and the sincerity of its feelings. He tried to apply these principles to his own, modern tanka, some of which retain the objective tone advocated by Shiki: tsuchi no ue ni over the ground yamakagashi asobazu the grass snakes have quit nari ni keri taking their leisure irihi aka-aka to the setting sun can be seen kusawara ni miyu red-red in the meadow In contrast with poets like Shiki and Mokichi, who worked to make tanka regain the freshness of the ManyOsha, several poets

203 BEFORE HAIKU 189 took up the more emotional strand of tanka history typical of the Heian era and mixed it with Western Romanticism. Their tanka are often powerful statements of emotion, and have a broad appeal. Two poets of this group are best known in Japan. Yosano Akiko ( ) was a major figure in the Romantic movement at the turn of the century. Her first book of tanka, Midaregami ("Tangled Hair"), gained wide notice, and she married the editor of the most important tanka magazine of the movement. In addition to her work as a writer, she had a strong interest in women's welfare, and founded a women's college. Here is one of her tanka: utani kike na tare no no hana ni akaki inamu omomuki am kana haru tsumi motsu ko hear the poems: who would deny the red of a field's flowers? how delicate this is a girl with spring desire Ishikawa Takuboku ( ) was one of the younger poets attracted to the magazine published by Yosano Tekken and Yosano Akiko. His difficulties in gaining literary recognition, and his economic problems, contributed to a deeply Romantic spirit. As his health grew worse his work continued to exhibit a spirit of adolescent depression. After his death at the age of twenty-six his poems, in both tanka and free-verse form, became the strongest single influence on modern tanka for several decades. Early in his writings Takuboku discarded the convention of having his tanka printed in one column, preferring instead to specify a three-column structure; he also did not care whether he limited himself to the nominal thirty-one-sound length of traditional tanka. Yet almost all of his tanka actually contain the traditional meters or a close approximation to them. In his last collection he added Western-style punctuation. But the real innovations in Takuboku's work are the modern diction and the breadth of subject matter, as compared to the tanka of old. Taku-

204 190 Before and Beyond Haiku boku's main subject is himself, his own emotional states. And love, the usual subject of emotion-laden tanka, does not take a primary place in his work. The following examples, one from earlier and one from later work, illustrate something of the range of moods in Takuboku's tanka: hosoboso to sokora kokora ni mushi no naku hiru no no ni kite yomu tegami kana faintly around here around there insects cry coming to the noonday moor ah the letters to read yaya toki mono ni omoishi terorisuto no kanashiki kokoro mo chikazuku hi no ari. thought it a rather distant thing the sadness of a terrorist's heart lately it's getting close. TANKA IN THE WEST Occasionally, since the growing interaction of Japan and the West, an Occidental poetaster has chased the elusive spirit of tanka through counted syllables, usually with little success. But in the last decade or so three New World poets have gone deeply into the Romantic world from which Akiko's and Takuboku's tanka came, and have come back with examples their Japanese forerunners might well be jealous of. An example by each of the three poets will demonstrate their unity with the tradition of Japanese Romantic tanka:

205 BEFORE HAIKU 191 hungry without money after awhile stopt pretending ate a parsnip Michael McClintock Alto en la cumbre todo el jardfn es luna, luna de oro. Ma's precioso es el roce de tu boca en la sombra. forge Luis Borges High on the summit the garden is all moonlight the moon is golden. More precious is the contact of your lips in the shadow. translated by Alastair Reid this summer night at the magazine rack fingers desperately turning Sanford Goldstein Some might argue that we do not need the tanka in the West, given our strong tradition of the personal lyric. The best response to such assertions is creation of poems that work for the writer, and perhaps for readers as well. I see no reason to ignore the possibilities, and leave the subject with one of my own: drove past the apartment house she lived in my five-year-old sweetheart

206 192 Before and Beyond Haiku AN INTRODUCTION TO RENGA Japanese scholars point out that question and answer poems, composed by two persons, appear in the earliest documents of Japanese history and literature. But the society that made aesthetics the core of life and raised the tanka to subtle and refined heights of artistry, Heian-kyo's aristocracy, really originated and brought to bud the first of the kinds of collaborative poems called renga. In each of its traditional manifestations renga composition can be described thus: A group of poets, usually three or more, meets to compose a long poem of several short stanzas. They may take turns according to some planned order, or volunteer their contributions, one stanza at a time. Formally, the stanzas resemble the two parts of a later tanka, composed in rhythms of about seventeen and fourteen onji, alternately. A typical renga from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries is fifty or one hundred stanzas long; several are considerably longer, with a length of one thousand stanzas not extremely uncommon. The point of renga writing is not to tell a story in a logical progression. Each stanza must move in some new direction, connected to the stanza just before it, but usually not to earlier stanzas. When reading a renga we do not discover a narrative sequence, but zig-zag over the different imaginary landscapes of the poets' minds, much as a spaceship coming out of polar orbit might flash now over ice and snow, now over teeming cities, now over green forests, ultimately to splash down into blue ocean. As readers we should enjoy the flow of sights, sounds, and insights as they tumble past. Indeed, "enjoyment" is a key word in early descriptions of renga by the first poet to codify the rules of the game. Nijo Yoshimoto ( ), the first of the great compilers of renga rules, and an important tanka poet, said "As renga has no ancient models prescribed from the beginning, it should sim-

207 BEFORE HAIKU 193 ply be an entertainment, arousing current emotions." Apparently others agreed with Yoshimoto, for he was the first to collect an anthology of renga, though the genre had flourished for over a hundred years when he was writing. Renga was considered a pastime, a thing of the moment. Most renga were not preserved, so we do not know much about the early history of the genre. What we do know comes mainly from the writings of Yoshimoto and later scholars who extended his work. In several documents, written over an active lifetime as a major poet and the leading student of the renga master Kyusei (also called Gusai, ), Yoshimoto set out what he felt were the important features of renga. These include elegant images, usually associated with the seasons; the ways in which poets link one verse to another; and a unity made up of variety, in which the poets work together to give the poem a harmony of movement and mood similar to that of a piece of classical music. In one of Yoshimoto's early works he lists, month-by-month, a number of objects which express "the heart of the seasons"; a few of them are mentioned in Chapter 7, Nature and Haiku. Yoshimoto particularly recommends these as topics for the starting verse, the hokku, of a renga. Once past the opening stanza, the rules of renga multiply. RENGA LINKING BASHO STYLE While the detailed rules of renga composition shifted from era to era, the main challenge of renga has always been making one verse connect with another. The art of linking verses in renga reached its peak in the work of the Basho School. A number of historical factors led to the haikai-no-renga of Basho and his followers. The seventeenth century haikai grew out of a sort of doggerel renga practiced by the same court poets who invented renga. Some scholars feel that the haikai (the word means more or less

208 194 Before and Beyond Haiku "funny", but is often understood as "vulgar") actually was the first kind of renga. They point out that renga writing originated in the relaxed aftermaths of contests in tanka composition, and was a comparatively informal way for the poets to put aside the seriousness of waka and play a game together. In time the loose style of renga subsided to be replaced at least in theory by the ideals of poets such as Yoshimoto. Thus, for a few hundred years the serious, or ushin (literally "with heart/mind") renga gained the upper hand, and the vulgar mushin ("heart/mind-less") renga, or haikai, occupied the same place in Japanese poetry that the limerick had in Victorian English literature. Between the time of Yoshimoto ( ) and BashO ( ), the rise of the middle class progressed to the point where wealthy merchants routinely mixed with samurai and priests. And they began to participate in learning and the arts in greater numbers and with greater influence. In the decades before Basho haikai underwent many changes, including a descent into quite tasteless vulgarity of content, and the loss of any sort of standards of formal structure. While most of the literary products of the time have little value in themselves, they set the stage for a flowering of literature in the Genroku Era ( ) that has been called the Japanese Renaissance. During this era, Ihara (or Ibara) Saikaku ( ) virtually invented the modern Japanese novel, Matsuo Basho perfected the haikai, and Chikamatsu Monzaemon (usually known as just Chikamatsu; ) wrote a body of plays for the kabuki and joruri (puppet) theaters that most scholars consider a rival to Shakespeare's. The art of these three writers, and of dozens of others who wrote extremely well but are overshadowed by these three geniuses, owes much of its strength to the economic and social upheavals that preceded them. For their art spoke of and to the lives of the townspeople of Osaka and Edo (now Tokyo), and put Japanese literature back in touch with colloquial language and actual experience, as opposed to the almost total dependence on

209 BEFORE HAIKU 195 the images and vocabulary of the received tradition which had dominated the courtly literature for several centuries. Basho and others of his generation devoted their lives to bringing sincerity into haikai. They did not try to restore the canons of the old ushin renga. They accepted much of the broadened subject matter achieved in the previous century, including many objects and events from the daily lives of the common people which certainly would not have found their way into the court poetry. And the members of the Basho School, in particular, strengthened the process of linking one stanza to another. They also wrote their haikai in the popular, shorter, thirty-six-stanza format called kasen. The linking techniques of the Basho School depend mainly on the images of the stanzas, and on the psychic archetypes and actual situations from life which the images represent. Though linking through allusions to earlier literature is not uncommon, it was not considered to be more important than other kinds of linking. (Literary allusions formed one of the primary foundations of linking in the older renga.) According to the writings of Basho's disciples, the following pairs of stanzas demonstrate linking by "scent" or "fragrance" {nioi or kaori):* tips refreshed a pine in evening shower a Zen monk is stark naked cooling * * * rice shoots lengthen in a soft breeze a convert starts by going over Suzuka Pass *Each stanza is given here as one horizontal line, with extra space in the line indicating the metrical structure of the original. The indented stanzas consist of two verse-lines in the original, usually of seven onji each; the others have three verse-lines in approximately five-sevenfive onji.

210 196 Before and Beyond Haiku Though nothing in any stanza overtly refers to the other in each pair, one feels a unity, a magnetism between the stanzas. Of the latter example a group of Japanese scholars says: The frailty of young paddies swayed by the slightest breeze... is matched... with the mood of uncertainty of a priest, who, having only lately entered a religious order and shaved his head, has donned the black robe of a novice, and is now crossing a desert mountain range. They also note that the last stanza, composed by Basho, may call to mind the following tanka by Saigyo: suzukayama Suzuka Pass ukiyo o yoso ni the world indifferently furisutete cast off ikani nariyuku how will it come out? waga mi naruran what will become of me? But knowing Saigyo's poem is not essential to appreciating either the stanza for itself or its connection with the previous verse, though we may be sure that Basho had Saigyo's tanka in mind. A stronger, but still indirect, connection between stanzas is called "echo" (hibiki): an orphaned crow in sleep-perplexing moon the thief- challenging lances' sound deepens night Here the disturbed order of things in the orphaned crow's sleeplessness resounds in the clatter of lances as a thief, one of society's cast-offs, runs for his life through the shadowy alleys of night. Another example of "echo": in azure sky the waning moon's daybreak in the autumn lake Mt. Hira's first frost The moon seems almost not there, fading in the light before sunrise. The frost appears like vapor reflected on the still lake, and

211 BEFORE HAIKU 197 awaits the vaporizing rays of the sun. Tranquillity and expectancy mix in each stanza. "Reflection" (utsuri) seems a bit more subtle than "echo" in terms of narrative, but implies some sort of shift of location. Here is an example of "reflection" with a comment on the stanzas by one of Basho's disciples: water chestnut leaves coiling and turning a teal cries a prayer-drum calls out in mountain shadow, frost Coming upon the water chestnut's leaves at the water's edge and the cry of a teal or the like is reflected in hearing the prayer-drum of the mountain shadow. The following verses demonstrate a less obvious connection, as well as the shift of locale characteristic of "reflection": in snow-sandals walking Kamakura spring hills yesterday distant Yoshiwara sky Each of these stanzas has a feeling of time and timelessness. The poet of the first walks the hills around Kamakura, the former capital of a military ruler, still wearing winter sandals even though spring has come. The second poet lets go of the problems and pain of yesterday under the sky of the entertainment district on the outskirts of Edo. The nuances of difference among these and other methods of linking verses in haikai easily elude one. But we can readily see that in most cases the connections are impressionistic, rather than logical or narrative. These examples also clearly show how the haikai of the Basho School incorporate images as lovely as any from the earlier ushin renga right along with such vulgar topics as a thief in the night and the pleasure district. Since most Japanese readers, let alone readers from other cultures, require extensive notes to understand classical renga, and such explications are beyond the scope of this book, no complete Japanese renga will be offered here. However, the example in the

212 198 Before and Beyond Haiku following section will give the reader a good impression of the texture of many Japanese renga. A number of classical Japanese renga and Basho School haikai have been published in English translations, often with extensive explanations of fine points of composition and background. Some of these appear in books listed in the Resources section for this chapter at the back of the book. RENGA AROUND THE WORLD Relatively few Western poets have tried to write anything resembling a Japanese renga. But since the late 1960s some North American haiku poets have made attempts at it, and renga increasingly find their way into American and Canadian haiku magazines. Thus the West has reversed the historical process in Japan, where renga grew up as a game, and resulted in the detached hokku or haiku as a serious literary genre after many centuries of development. Most Westerners who have tried renga first learned to write haiku and later tried to learn the process of linking haiku-like images into renga. While many Japanese renga have been and continue to be written in one continuous meeting of a group of poets, Westerners have had difficulty with this aspect of renga. One reason is that few towns or cities in the West boast more than a handful of possible renga poets, while in Japan at the peak of Basho's career one might find a group ready to write haikai in almost any village. Another may well be that when poets begin writing with the ideal of creating striking individual poems it is difficult for them to shift gears and write verses that fit well together into a renga. Some of the attempts at renga parties which I have attended with American haiku poets ended in miserable failure, for each poet wanted to write nothing but the most brilliant verses, and discussions always seemed to center on whether a particular verse was "good enough" to be used in the poem, rather than on whether it fit the

213 BEFORE HAIKU 199 poem. In one instance, four of the finest American haiku poets took several hours to come up with five stanzas of renga. Then they gave up and went home. These poets failed because they did not consider the two most important aspects of renga as a whole: The smooth movement from stanza to stanza. And constructing stanzas that fit the overall design of the poem as it grows. The American poets would have done well to preface their meeting with a passage from the essay "In Praise of Shadows" by one of Japan's greatest modern novelists, Tanizaki Junichiro. In it he speaks of various aspects of Japanese culture, especially architecture. This excerpt has been translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker: We value a scroll above all for the way it blends with the walls of the alcove, and thus we consider the mounting quite as important as the calligraphy or painting. Even the greatest masterpiece will lose its worth as a scroll if it fails to blend with the alcove, while a work of no particular distinction may blend beautifully with the room and set off to unexpected advantage both itself and its surroundings. In effect, many American would-be renga poets have been too preoccupied with the possible beauty or defects of the scroll to look at the way it did or did not blend with its surroundings. A number of moderately successful renga have been completed by Western authors who live at some distance from each other, and write renga by correspondence. For the past decade or so there have probably been at least a few such efforts in progress at any given time, and a number have been published in magazines. Some of these renga-by-mail have been international efforts, involving Japanese and American authors together, usually writing in English. Japanese students of renga often write solo renga, usually as practice exercises, and a few Western poets have tried this also.

214 200 Before and Beyond Haiku Octavio Paz, the well-known Mexican poet, has written one rather engaging example in Spanish, as have several haiku poets writing in English. Western efforts at solo renga have not amounted to much as yet, however.* To date, the most substantial work in renga written in a Western language has been done in Japan. Tadashi Kondo and his wife, the American artist Kris Young, invited friends to gather at their home in Tokyo over a period of several months during 1980, 1981, and 1982 to write renga. It may be significant that few if any of the participants, besides Kondo, had much previous experience with haiku. The dozen thirty-six-stanza renga produced at their gatherings will be published in a pamphlet soon in the United States, and we may expect additional interesting renga to follow. The relaxed atmosphere of these gatherings can be felt in Kondo's letter to me describing the process of making the renga. Here are some excerpts: We did not have any written format or order to follow.... Once in a while we stopped to talk about linking technique, structure, or aesthetics. One of us would start talking or asking about them, then we would exchange our opinions. Naturally I referred mainly to Japanese classic renga... but I always tried not to impose the whole framework of Japanese renga, because I was interested in finding what we might be able to produce when writing renga in English in Tokyo in the 1980's with international backgrounds. The core of Japanese renga was formed by a *Paz's solo renga, called "El dia en Udaipur" ("The day in Udaipur"), can be found in Spanish and English in his book Configurations. Some American examples appear in Hiroaki Sato's One Hundred Frogs. See Resources.

215 BEFORE HAIKU 201 court poet in Kyoto in the fourteenth century. Some rules are relevant and others are not in the twentieth century, especially when we are trying an international renga. I like the analogy of the renga structure to that of Noh; the idea of the structure consisting of three phases of beginning, development, and finale. I thought we could apply this basic structure. It would be like the form of classical music.... Knowing about the rules of the positions of the moon, flowers, and so on, may not spoil an international renga, but it would cause more trouble than help to try to impose those rules... We would give comments on each other's stanzas after they were made. Sometimes we had to think or wait an hour or so until a decent one came out... The gatherings were always in a casual and friendly mood... So we discussed many of the verses until we were satisfied. We spent a lot of time trying to help organize what one wanted to say, and to search for how to put it in a brief phrase... "Eleven Hours" is the only renga we intended to finish in one session. Philip, who had been working... in Tokyo, found a new job [in] Kyoto... We wanted to try a farewell renga party in one session. We did not expect it to take that long. Tim came after Philip made his second stanza. When we finished, everyone was tired but happy for the success. We decided to call it "Eleven Hours" to celebrate the success, although we could call it "Morning Wind", which I like very much. Here, then, is an English-language renga written in Tokyo one night in March 1981, by Philip Meredith (English), Tadashi Kondo (Japanese), Robert Reed (American), Kris Young (American), and Timothy Knowles (Welsh):

216 Before and Beyond Haiku Eleven Hours morning wind blowing away the rain clouds swaying willow buds Philip a group of children getting on a tour bus Tadashi almost catching never being caught three boys and a duck Robert shadows deepen the old man locks the gate Kris crows gathering in the branches the sky darkens Philip in from the cold the choir practices Timothy chat over beer steam rising from lake trout Tadashi

217 BEFORE HAIKU 203 the cook opens the back door to look at the snow Robert cat tracks crisscrossing the alley Kris locking up the night club blinking in the dawn Philip don't forget your briefcase, dear it's cheese, pickled onion and a little surprise Timothy five minutes by bike to the station Tadashi the old woman is not there today sweeping in front of her house Robert plum petals and sheets of white pills Kris steam on the mirror waiting for the bath to cool squeezing a spot Philip

218 204 Before and Beyond Haiku tight jeans, latest style chosen with care Timothy disco horror and takenoko* swinging in town Tadashi one girl crying as she sings a kindergarten graduation Robert a nameless cap and three left mittens the lost and found box Kris a chipped mug of hot sweet tea a moth pats at the window Philip uncurled, stretching tail twitching a little leaves the room Timothy thirteenth night moon over her home Tadashi Literally, "bamboo shoot" slang for wildly dressed youth.

219 BEFORE HAIKU 205 a mother and daughter part a flock of pigeons leaving the shrine Robert reading her fortune she stifles a laugh Kris returning by train a purple beach bag plump pink toes Philip an old yellow snapshot found between the leaves Timothy the cottage roof leaking, the drips measure the night Tadashi lying down in the sunlight on the floor Robert my head cradled on your arm drifting into sleep Kris brushing by the banks the boat creaks and moves downstream Philip

220 206 Before and Beyond Haiku a summer storm drives the boys to shelter Timothy bamboo pinwheel the colors of a rainbow Tadashi brand new little red puddle-hunting boots Robert three in the afternoon grandmother knitting by the window Kris switching on the lamp faces in the wallpaper logs shift in the grate Philip the mother wakes as her child dreams Timothy This is one of the best renga in English I have read. In particular, the twists and turns of these last six stanzas stand out. The summer storm and boys of one stanza suggest the pinwheel and rainbow of the next. They, in turn, shift to smaller children playing outside different from the earlier boys, who were seeking shelter. Then we see a grandmother in the afternoon sunlight, knitting by the window where she can keep an eye on the little one in red boots. Time moves on, and grandmother sees images

221 BEFORE HAIKU 207 of the past in the gathering dusk. Finally, the logs shifting in the grate awaken mother, and her child dreams on, ending the renga on a pleasant note, gently looking to the future. It is as though Philip, who is about to leave Tokyo for his new job in Kyoto, was thinking of his years in Tokyo and his friends there, and he is consoled by Timothy, who suggests that he consider the possibilities of the future, much as a dreaming child. When Masaoka Shiki came on the scene in the late nineteenth century, he said that renga was not literature, but that haiku could be revived. And he did a good deal to revive it. Perhaps, now that increasing Western interest in all aspects of haiku is beginning to gain notice in Japan, even the renga will be revived through the interaction of Japanese and Western authors. Certainly Tadashi Kondo and Kris Young, and their guests, have begun to show the way.

222

223 14 Haiku Prose THE JAPANESE HAIBUN Japanese haiku poets have not always stayed within the confines of haiku and renga. As we saw in Chapter 2, The Four Great Masters, Buson created a sort of free-verse long before the vers libre of modern European poetry. He also wrote a number of haibun short essays in prose with hokku (that is, haiku) mixed in. Basho did his most important work in the haibun. A few poets in Basho's day wrote humorous, or haikai, prose. Basho took this haikai prose and wed it to the great tradition of the poetic diary, adding new depth to the playfulness of haikai in prose as he had in verse. Here is a short haibun by Basho. Note the relationship between the prose and the verse; the hokku could very well stand independently, but it also completes and deepens the description of Basho's surroundings. "Raku" is an old name for Kyoto, and "Rakushisha" means roughly "House of the Falling Persimmons"; Kyorai is one of Basho's closest disciples. I am indebted to Tadashi Kondo, who stayed two years in the present Rakushisha on the site of the original, for bringing this haibun to my attention and helping me translate it. 209

224 210 Before and Beyond Haiku Record of Rakushisha Raku's What's-his-name Kyorai has this cottage in the thicket of Shimo Saga, foot of Arashiyama, close to the stream of Oigawa. This area has the convenience of tranquility, a place to clear the mind. That Kyorai's a lazy fellow, grasses high in front of the window, a number of persimmon trees spreading branches wide June rains leaking in, tatami and shoji smell moldy, no place fit to sit down. This sunshine, however, this is the owner's hospitality. samidare ya June rains... shikishi hegitaru poem card torn away kabe no ato trace on the wall BashOan no Tosei Even in this short piece, we can see the shifting tone, from the traditional humorous opening to the formal and sincere praise of the location's virtues. Then a few words expand on the humor connected with the owner. He is too lazy to cut down the grass around the place, or prune his fruit trees. Everything is wild and run down. But the rains of June (the original says "Fifth-month rains", referring to the lunar calendar) have cleared for the moment, and the sunlight streams in, lighting up the interior. Actually, Basho is praising the isolation of the place, and appreciates the beauty of its wildness. And he notes that the previous resident, probably Kyorai himself, was a person of taste, as indicated by the marks where poem cards had been attached to the wall. Finally, he signs with his pen name of the time, which means "Peach Green of Banana-Plant Hut" and shows his familiarity with other simple living arrangements. From this example we can see the characteristics of haibun, as Basho practiced it. Here is a list, based on the observations of Makoto Ueda, a scholar and admirer of Basho's work:

225 Characteristics of Haibun HAIKU PROSE Written in prose, usually concluded with one or more haiku. 2. Brief. 3. Abbreviated in syntax; grammar words, sometimes even verbs, are omitted. 4. No explanation of the haiku; the connection between the prose and the haiku is often like linking in renga. 5. Imagistic; relatively few abstractions or generalizations. 6. Objective; the writer is somewhat detached, maintains an aesthetic distance, even when describing himself. 7. Humorous; while seriousness and beauty concern the writer, a haibun usually demonstrates the light touch. As Ueda says, "It is up to the reader to grasp the meaning of the prose, and then of the haiku, and to go on to discover the undercurrents of meaning common to both." Basho's short haibun, of which there are more than sixty, cover such subjects as places (like Rakushisha), people he meets, and the events of his daily life. He also wrote five travel journals, and an extended diary in the haibun style. The longest of these, Narrow Roads of the Interior (Oku no hosomichi), stands beside Lady Murasaki's Tale of Genji as one of the great classics of Japanese literature. Fortunately, this work has been translated into English with something of the compression and brilliance of the original by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, under the title Back Roads to Far Towns (which is listed, with other books containing translations of Japanese haibun, in Resources at the back of this handbook). Like Basho, Buson also wrote a number of haibun, of which the following is the last, written a few months before he died. Buson, in his late sixties, was invited on an excursion by a younger disciple. This is slightly longer than the usual short hai-

226 212 Before and Beyond Haiku bun, and demonstrates the renga-like movement of such longer pieces as Basho's travel journals. Uji is southeast of Kyoto; a few footnotes explain allusions that Buson's readers would have understood. Uji Visit South of Mount Uji, deep in the mountains, to Field-Moor Town called to gather mushrooms, young companions ahead greedily competing for the spoils, I, lagging behind, with heart serene searched through nooks and crannies, found five pine mushrooms about the size of small hats of sedge. Such splendid ones, how is it that Uji's Chief Councillor of State, Lord Takakuni, 1 stopped writing, honoring us with the marvelous information on flat mushrooms, but finished without adding the auspiciousness of pine mushrooms? kimi miyo ya look, Sir shtii no take no mushrooms for gleaning tsuyu gohon five dewy ones On the highest summit, dwellings visible; called High Ridge Village. They resort to scooping trout 2 as an occupation, a means of making a way in the world. Thatched cottages built in the clouds, a broken bridge 3 verging on the water that people live even hanging beyond the earth in spite of itself the visitor's heart chills. 'Said to be the author of Gleanings and Stories from Uji. 2 Ayu, sometimes translated as "sweetfish". 3 Alluding to a poem by Tu Fu, with the lines: broken bridge no plank walkway fallen willow fresh wild branches

227 HAIKU PROSE 213 ayu ochite trout falling iyo-iyo takaki taller and taller onoe kana the ridge-peaks Said to be Rice Landing, where the Uji River makes its most rapid channel; water and stone fight each other in rushing waves, the high billows like flying snow resemble clouds whirling. The sound reverberating in mountain and valley confuses human speech. a silver jug suddenly dashed crystal fluid spatters armored cavalry rushes out swords & spears resound four strings one sound like tearing silk remembering the magnificent poem in which Po Chti-I makes a metaphor for the lovely sound of the biwa. kinu o saku biwa no nagare ya aki no koe the silk-tearing biwa's current autumn's voice "Uji Visit" begins in a lighthearted vein, with Buson's pleasure in finding some excellent mushrooms that the younger people, rushing ahead in eagerness, missed. The work Buson alludes to, Gleanings and Stories from Uji, apparently a sort of travelogue, suggests a typical outing in which a small group goes for a day of sightseeing in the 'Countryside. Buson gently pokes fun at his companions and then at Lord Takakuni, both of whom missed the pine mushrooms. The hokku underscores this by showing how fresh-looking they are in the dew. The pointed crowns of the pine mushrooms prepare the reader for the next section's opening image. With the peaks of High Ridge Village the emotion shifts to awe at the hardiness of the high villagers, and respect for their tough way of life. The wildness of the environment and the fragility of the works of man show in the graphic description and

228 214 Before and Beyond Haiku the reference to Tu Fu's poem. As the trout "fall" come down river in the autumn Buson feels more and more the height of the peaks and the wildness of the place. As the fish come down they carry Buson with them, linking us to the next place, a rapids in the lower portion of the river. Here a cacophony of images blends to convey the turbulence of white water and rushing sound. Direct quotation of lines from the great T'ang Dynasty poet Po Chii-I picks up and expands these images through layers of metaphor. The pieces of the "silver jug" and the spattering fluid restate the billows and froths of the rapids, the resounding swords and spears of the cavalry expand the "fight... in rushing waves" and then we find that Po Chti-I was speaking of the sound of a stringed instrument, a sort of lute! Now Buson shifts all the passion of his description of the rapids, through Po's lines, into the striking image of tearing silk. Using this image to open the hokku brings all of the images connected with it in metaphor into the hokku as well. He links these images to the river itself by calling the biwa's sound a "current", and then carries them all further into the final phrase, "autumn's voice". In both Chinese and Japanese traditional poetry "autumn's voice" normally refers to the sounds of rustling leaves and singing insects. Here Buson gives the somewhat hackneyed phrase new and powerful meaning. For those familiar with the Chinese poets, as Buson's contemporary readers no doubt were, Po Chu-I's poem contains rich associations. The poem is "Biwa Visit" (P'i-pa Hsing) and describes how one night Po and a friend went out in a boat to enjoy the moon and some wine together. Po Chii-I had been sent away from the capital to this outpost, and was trying to make the best of the circumstances. He and his friend were about to return to shore, having no music to complete the aesthetics of the moment, when they heard beautiful music played in a style one might expect at the capital coming from a nearby boat. Po Chii- I describes the conclusion of the playing thus:

229 HAIKU PROSE 215 a silver jug suddenly dashed crystal fluid spatters armored cavalry rushes out swords & spears resound song gathering to the end stroke with care struck four strings one sound like tearing silk eastern skiff & western boat still without words simply see in the river's heart the autumn moon white At this point Po Chti-I comes to fully realize how deeply he has missed the rich pleasures of life in the capital. As a cosmopolitan, city person, Buson too knows the "pleasures of the capital" and would like to continue experiencing them. But he also takes pleasure in the natural surroundings of the country. In his hokku at the end of "Uji Visit" he combines all the elements of pleasure in the season the sounds of leaves and insects, the roar of the rapids but he also recalls in Po Chti- I's poem the pleasures of art, of life itself. Perhaps conscious that he is at the end of his own life's autumn, he has built into this short haibun humor and lighthearted gaiety, a sense of the hardships of life, and awe in the face of nature's beauty and power. He has praised a poet whose works he loved, and made a poem in which that poet's genius joins his own in a celebration of art and nature together. Probably the second most important extended haibun, after Basho's Narrow Roads of the lnterier, is Issa's best-known work, My Spring (Ora ga haru), an autobiography in haibun form. Cast as the diary of one full year when Issa was well along in life, it reveals the full range of his delicate joy in family life and his grief at the deaths of his children. It is a long work too long to excerpt effectively here. An English translation is listed in Resources. In the twentieth century Japanese haiku poets have continued to write occasional haibun, usually in a light, humorous style. The energy and taciturnity of the best haibun style, as found in the passages quoted above, have influenced modernist writers of prose poems, based mainly on French models by Charles Bau-

230 216 Before and Beyond Haiku delaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarme. As we might expect, these works take on the colorings of their surreal, often despairing forebears, and do not usually exhibit the lightness that characterizes the traditional short haibun. A decent English translation of some of this work, with an excellent introduction, is listed in Resources. HAIBUN IN THE WEST Relatively few Western writers have written anything resembling haibun. Perhaps one of the earliest examples is a passage from the Days (Meres) of the Greek poet George Seferis ( ). In Volume I, covering the years , the following entry appears; the English translation has been made for this book by Manya Bean: 1 January 1931 I hear a dialogue without seeing the faces: How is Mrs. R.? She passed away. Died! The poor "girl"! No matter, we'll all get there. I have my brothers and I bury one each year; and one year, one along with my mother, who was run over by a car in Kozane. Not Given For the lady who searched in the field for goldfish. This dialogue has the quality of some of the lines quoted in the opening section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which Seferis

231 HAIKU PROSE 217 admired and translated into modern Greek. His little poem in haiku form, though it sounds more like a dedication than a poem, relates to the prose in much the same way that the hokku of Basho's "Record of Rakushisha" relates to its prose. The prose has the tone of everyday banter, the second speaker deliberately countering the first's incipient emotionalism with dry irony, while the poem seems to have a gentle humor. The density of image, event, experience piled up on one another in Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior, Buson's "Uji Visit", or Issa's My Spring has rarely been achieved in English. Occasionally Jack Kerouac has it, and puts it together with haiku, as in this passage from his novel Desolation Angels, first published in This section was written in 1956: Meanwhile the sunsets are mad orange fools raging in the gloom, whilst far in the south in the direction of my intended loving arms of senoritas, snowpink piles wait at the foot of the world, in general silver ray cities the lake is a hard pan, gray, blue, waiting at the mist bottoms for when I ride her in Phil's boat Jack Mountain as always receives his meed of little cloud at highbrow base, his thousand football fields of snow all raveled and pink, that one unimaginable abominable snowman still squatted petrified on the ridge Golden Horn far off is yet golden in a gray southeast Sourdough's monster hump overlooks the lake Surly clouds blacken to make fire rims at that forge where the night's being hammered, crazed mountains march to the sunset like drunken cavaliers in Messina when Ursula was fair, I would swear that Hozomeen would move if we could induce him but he spends the night with me and soon when stars rain down the snowfields he'll be in the pink of pride all black and yaw-y to the north where (just above him every night) North Star flashes pastel orange, pastel green, iron orange, iron blue, azurite indicative constellative auguries of her makeup up

232 218 Before and Beyond Haiku there that you could weigh on the scales of the golden world The wind, the wind And there's my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day, facing south, the papers and pencils and the coffee cup with sprigs of alpine fir and a weird orchid of the heights wiltable in one day My Beechnut gum, my tobacco pouch, dusts, pitiful pulp magazines I have to read, view south to all those snowy majesties The waiting is long. On Starvation Ridge little sticks Are trying to grow. Kerouac is sitting in a fire-lookout station on top of Starvation Ridge in the northern Cascades, just south of the border between the state of Washington and British Columbia. It is near the beginning of the two-month stay he has signed up for, and already he feels lonely. Passages of description, like this one, and of memory jogs, philosophical introspection, and the inane wordmusic of just trying to crank up the writing machine, chase one another around through the forty-seven short "chapters" of which this is number four, entire. Words filling the void, companions few: "The wind, the wind " and a fresh sprig or two of alpine fir, a wilting flower, gum and tobacco his only substitute for the booze and other intoxicants left behind with civilization. Kerouac had finished writing On the Road, which would come out the following year, and had yet to start The Dharma Bums. He had hoped to write while he was up there, and to seek a deepening of the religious impulses he felt. "The waiting is long." And the little sticks on Starvation Ridge are at too high an altitude to grow very much, though they try. We might compare Kerouac's attitude toward this landscape with Buson's toward that of Uji.

233 HAIKU PROSE 219 A movement like the renga linking technique in Buson's "Uji Visit" occurs in the extended haibun Behind the Fireflies, by Hal Roth. Roth combines haiku written on the spot today with his own short prose descriptions of events during one of the bloodiest days of fighting in the American Civil War. To these he adds direct quotations from accounts by eye-witnesses to and participants in what Northern historians call "The Battle of Antietam", which took place at Sharpsburg, Maryland. The following passage represents five pages from the book, with asterisks indicating page breaks: waves of summer heat cows huddle beneath a sycamore * The Union attacks focused upon the high ground surrounding a small white structure on the Sharpsburg ridge, the Church of the Brethren. "Under the dark shade of a towering oak near the Dunker Church lay the lifeless form of a drummer boy... flaxen hair and eyes of blue and form of delicate mold... His lips were compressed, his eyes half open, a bright smile played upon his countenance." * around and around the little white church a boy chases his sister * Private J. D. Hicks, USA As the battle on the Union right dwindled in the exhaustion of both sides, fresh brigades crossed the creek and

234 220 Before and Beyond Haiku engaged Lee's center where a sunken country lane provided natural fortifications for the defenders. Again, the advancing lines with colors unfurled, with polished bayonets flashing in the sunlight; again, the rattle of muskets, the acrid, billowing smoke; again, the violence of artillery shaking the green, rolling hills. through hazy stillness a brass cannon points at two lovers Roth makes effective use of renga and haibun techniques in this work, but instead of roaming a diverse landscape or mindscape, he bears down on the two realities of the "Battle of Sharpsburg", as Southern historians call it, and the present peaceful park on the site of that battleground. One could, in fact, read through all the even-numbered pages of the book and gather a fairly full, if brief, picture of that 17th of September, 1862, when a field of corn and soldiers was cut down by cannon fire, and a country lane was paved with bodies dressed in blue and butternut. And one could read all the odd-numbered pages to find an idyllic sequence of haiku on a summer day in the park, almost any park. Read straight through, however, Behind the Fireflies zigzags only so far as the alternating teeth of a rapidly closing zipper, the teeth, if you will, of life and death. For the feeling person, reading this book leads directly to a deepening sense of the strangeness of war, and perhaps its futility, as earlier caught in another battlefield haiku, from Basho's Narrow Roads of the Interior: summer grass those mighty warriors' dream tracks *

235 HAIKU PROSE 221 LIVING NOT EMOTING In these few examples of Japanese and Western haibun we have seen a wide variety of events, thoughts, and feelings: Basho's pleasure of place; Buson's enjoyment of an excursion and reflections on the hardships and joys of life; a brief conversation overheard by Seferis and his even briefer but many-layered response to it; the intensity of Kerouac's isolation in a grand natural setting; the juxtaposition of past horrors with the present pastorals found in a park by Roth. All of these writers have taken the outer, specific objects and events of the here and now, and mixed them to a greater or lesser degree with the shared past and personal inner life, arising now in direct quotation from or allusion to history or literature, now in a choice of metaphor. In some pieces, like those by Basho and Kerouac, the present reality dominates. In Roth's the present is very much with us, but serves as a foil for the more insistent past. And in those by Buson and Seferis the past soon shifts the present into some almost timeless space. Like haiku, haibun begins in the everyday events of the author's life. These events occur as minute particulars of object, person, place, action. The author recognizes that these events connect with others in the fabric of time and literature, and weaves a pattern demonstrating this connection. And if this writing is to be truly haibun, the author does this with a striking economy of language, without any unnecessary grammar, so that each word carries rich layers of meaning. The concision of haibun yields another benefit. Such precise, taut language creates an aesthetic distance that undermines our tendency to self-satisfaction or self-pity. The writer focuses on the action of living, rather than on the "liver". Bringing the spareness of haiku poetry to prose gives us the best of autobiography and familiar essay the actions, events, people, places, and recollections of life lived without weighing them down with sentimentality, perhaps the greatest enemy of art and life.

236

237 15 Beyond Haiku SENRYU THE HUMAN COMEDY Like haiku, the senryu* originates in haikai-no-renga. But the senryu begins in the middle stanzas of the renga, not in the hokku, or starting verse. Just as renga poets practiced composing hokku, they also practiced linking stanzas. Called tsukeai, "joining together" or simply "linking", the game of someone supplying one stanza and someone else adding a second had been around since ManyOshU times, when two poets occasionally composed a waka or tanka together. As renga grew in popularity more and more poets practiced the art of linking stanzas in pairs. Books on renga commonly discussed pairs of stanzas in isolation, yielding the examples of linked pairs in Chapter 13, for example. The earliest anthologies of renga contained mainly pairs of stanzas. In all of these instances, the emphasis was on the connection, the tsukeai, between one stanza and another. The Japanese word senryu is properly romanized with the long sign over the u; accepting it as an English word, I have dropped the long sign. It is pronounced somewhat like the English phrase "send you" with the d replaced by aflipped,spanish r. 223

238 224 Before and Beyond Haiku Since the inner verses of a renga often involve humor, concentrating on tsukeai tends to produce humorous verses. As the samples in Chapter 13 indicate, the inner stanzas of renga frequently deal with human events and actions. While many of the inner stanzas have a seasonal feeling, many do not. Since season words usually contribute no humor in a renga, and the point of practice linking eventually became humor, the season word disappeared from tsukeai, which came to be called maekuzuke, "joining to a previous verse". In time the maeku, "previous verse", became less and less interesting in itself, merely providing a pretext for the new tsukeku, "joined verse". Eventually the maeku was dropped altogether.* Here is a pair of linked stanzas from the first renga anthology, the TsukubashU (1356), edited by Nijo Yoshimoto: hitomaro ni nite resembling Hitomaro uta ya yomuramu reciting some songs! kaki no moto o nagaruru mizu ni naku kawazu beneath a hedge in the flowing water a singing frog Lord Tamesuke (b. 1263) The humor here is not just in the comparison of the great Many- OshU poet, Hitomaro, with a frog. Kaki no moto means "beneath a hedge" and is a homonym for Hitomaro's surname, Kakinomoto. Authorities disagree on the meanings of maekuzuke, maeku, and tsukeku. Some, like R. H. Blyth, indicate that maekuzuke means "joining in front of a verse", with the maeku added in front of the challenge verse, or tsukeku. This view would have the completed maekuzuke result in a verse in tanka form,five-seven-five-seven-seven.with Hiroaki Sato, Sugimoto Nagashige, and others, I accept the conceptually simpler transcription for maekuzuke, "joining to a previous verse"; thus the maeku is the challenge verse, written first, and the tsukeku is added after it. This seems to better reflect the growth of maekuzuke from renga.

239 BEYOND HAIKU 225 This example, and the other linked pairs in the TsukubashU, came from actual renga of a hundred or more stanzas. Yoshimoto selected them as particularly good examples of linking technique. The point of this pair is the strong connection between them, both in harmony of meaning and in the pun skillfully built in by the author of the tsukeku. Here the tsukeku makes active use of the material of the maeku, and without the maeku it would have much less impact. By the end of the seventeenth century, about the time of Basho's death, the game of maekuzuke had become detached from renga composition. Maekuzuke became particularly popular through contests at teahouses and wineshops. A "selector" or "marker" left a group of maeku off at the shop, and customers would add their tsukeku. Then the marker would collect the customers' efforts, select the best, and publish them in a mankuawase, "collection of ten thousand verses". The authors of the tsukeku paid a small fee for participating, and from these fees the selectors made their profit and distributed prizes. A new sheet of mankuawase chosen by a particular selector appeared about every three weeks during the height of this activity, throughout most of the eighteenth century. As there were several selectors (including some of Basho's foremost disciples), and estimates indicate that only three percent or so of the submitted verses were included in mankuawase, we can imagine that a great many verses were written. I have seen two examples of mankuawase; one, dated 1768, included about 120 poems selected from about 500 entries, and the other, dated 1770, had 284 verses drawn from about 10,500. (Those sending poems to the editors of today's literary magazines might well remember these odds!) The participants in this massive poetical activity were mostly tradesmen, merchants, and other members of the middle class in Edo, now Tokyo. Their tastes were not as refined as those of the noble and priestly classes who had dominated Japanese poetry before them, and the subject matter of their verses frequently

240 226 Before and Beyond Haiku reflected the sort of conversations one might expect to find in the teahouses and wineshops where they wrote. The following verses from 1770 illustrate. By this time the maeku had been reduced to one seven-sound verse line, with a repeat sign, giving an effect like this: mutsumashii koto friendly indeed Here are two of the several tsukeku written to this maeku: okusama no otsukute fumi ni uta ka iri miken kizu kono ho sawagu ikkachtt in the letter his wife is writing maybe a poem a forehead scratch from there the uproar of one whole house The first of these examples contains polite prefixes in the Japanese which make it clear that the author speaks of some superior's wife perhaps alluding to the nobility of old, or, more probably, to the rumors going the rounds about some boss's wife. In either case, there is the unmistakable suggestion that the wife is sending a love poem to someone other than her husband. The second verse contains a pun, miken, meaning both "unknown" and "forehead"; thus the activities of the returned husband are broadcast to the world, and he all unsuspecting. In both of these instances, we can easily see how the "friendly deed" of the maeku was interpreted by the authors of the tsukeku. But the tsukeku may be read entirely by themselves, without reference to the maeku, which has now become a rather unnecessary title. In typical mankuawase, in fact, the three or four maeku were printed only once each at the beginning, and then simply indicated by a symbol such as an asterisk or circle in front of each tsukeku for those who wished to know which maeku had inspired the responses.

241 BEYOND HAIKU 227 SENRYU STANDS ALONE In the meantime, between 1750 and 1776, some eighteen volumes of an anthology of renga verses were published in a series called Mutamagawa. Where earlier renga anthologies contained pairs of linked stanzas (tsukeai), Mutamagawa had anonymous single verses. In tune with the times, the editor Keikiitsu ( ) selected verses with a good deal of humor, in both the fourteen- and seventeen-sound forms. Here are a few samples; remember, each was originally written as a stanza of renga, but is now presented as a solo verse: shindai no ana wa yane kara miete kuru mushiba no ryoji shita e hi ga sasu the fortune's gap in the roof shows up cavity in treatment on my tongue the sun shines ryorinin the cook, nitateru uchi ni while boiling, gojttnen fifty years yoi ga sameru to akai ka ga tobu as the high fades red mosquitoes fly While renga were written throughout the eighteenth century, most publishing activity revolved around single renga stanzas taken out of the contexts in which they had been created, and around maekuzuke. Karai Senryu ( ) was the best known selector of maekuzuke. In 1765 his student Goryoken Arubeshi started publishing a series of anthologies called Haifa yanagidaru ("haikai-style willow barrel"), containing tsukeku culled from the thousands of verses published in Senryu's mankuawase. From the very first volume of Yanagidaru, Arubeshi decided to include only verses which could be understood on their own; the maeku were omitted.

242 228 Before and Beyond Haiku Yanagidaru established the seventeen-sound form of the tsukeku as a solo work, and helped spread Senryu's fame as a selector. Since the names of the selectors were more important than those of the authors of the tsukeku, the genre was anonymous. Eventually all such verses came to be called senryu in honor of the most energetic selector. A few of the verses published in one or another of the first twenty-four volumes of Yanagidaru, assembled from Senryu's selections for mankuawase, follow. Senryu are almost always humorous, mainly concerned with human nature, sometimes with a light touch: Sometimes sharper: akarumi e into the light hikizutte deru dragging along shitatemono the tailoring haribako o as he searches sagasu to nycbo the needle-box his wife tonde deru comes flying While we may need the light to sew by, we do not want all of our possessions pried into. Some senryu do not have the immediacy of haiku, but lapse into aphorism, like this: kokc no shitai toki ni wa oya wa nashi when one wishes to show filial piety parents gone Some senryu seem indistinguishable from haiku, except perhaps for a self-conscious turn of phrase: inazuma wa the lightning kumo o egutte gouges the clouds dokka yuki and goes somewhere While "lightning" is a season word associated with August, which is the beginning of autumn by Japanese reckoning this

243 BEYOND HAIKU 229 senryu differs from haiku on the topic, such as this one by Basho's disciple Kikaku: inazuma ya the lightning... kino wa higashi yesterday in the east kyo wa nishi today in the west A Zen-inspired commentator might say that Kikaku does not wonder where the lightning comes from or goes to, but accepts it, while the senryu writer questions. I suspect that Kikaku simply expresses his curiosity more subtly, and the real humor of the senryu lies in the contrast between the casualness of going "somewhere" and the force of "gouges", which almost personifies the lightning. HAIKU OR SENRYU? To some purists only the absence of season words and kireji divides senryu from haiku although the "lightning/gouges" poem above has both season word and kireji. Others note that senryu tend to focus on the humor in a situation, and do not always speak of the specific here and now, while haiku usually do. Human concerns, though not absent from haiku, dominate senryu. The question of what is a haiku and what a senryu is further clouded when we compare certain poems by "haiku poets" with some senryu. For example, in this pair, which is the haiku, which the senryu? sekkyo ni by sermons kegareta mimi o soiled ears to hototogisu a cuckoo machiwabiru to waiting-weary mimi e kaeru no ears only the voices koe bakari of the frogs

244 230 Before and Beyond Haiku Masaoka Shiki wrote the first of these about the "sermons", the bland haiku and conventional theories, of his contemporaries. His followers immortalized it by naming their haiku magazine Hototogisu, "cuckoo". But the poem resembles senryu more than haiku in both intent and treatment, despite the fact that the Japanese cuckoo is noted for its song, and has none of the connotations associated with the English word. The second poem above, an anonymous senryu from a hundred years before Shiki's haiku, exactly catches a lover who has been waiting a long time, straining to hear any sound that indicates an approach. But the frogs keep croaking. If the author recognizes the irritation of the one who waits, he also does not become involved in it himself, but merely records its cause. While the subject matter here is senryu, the treatment is haiku. The original selectors of maekuzuke were renga poets. Although they certainly recognized the differences between the hokku and the interior verses of haikai-no-renga, they considered all these works parts of the same branch of literature. But as renga faded from popularity and senryu came to be composed independently from challenge verses, people tended to see haiku and senryu as different genres. Today's haiku poets usually concentrate on an aesthetic appreciation of the world; senryu poets focus their attention mainly on the humor in the human condition. Some Japanese will stoutly deny that haiku occasionally resemble senryu, or will claim one or the other as the higher, more satisfying art. But when we examine the poems themselves, several hokku by Kikaku, some by Basho, and many by haikaino-renga poets before them seem more senryu than haiku. Since we call these people haiku poets today, their hokku are all called haiku. And the anonymous verses of the mankuawase, as well as the new verses based on that tradition, are called senryu. Today Japanese poets who write senryu write without the stimulus of any challenge verses. And there are magazines that publish only senryu. Here is a modern senryu which may be com-

245 pared with a haiku we have already seen: okaeri no kaban issho ni dakitsukare tsuma dakana shunchti no jari fumite kaeru BEYOND HAIKU 231 arrived home with the briefcase embraced to hold my wife treading spring noon's gravel going home Whether we feel love in the lumps of a briefcase in the middle of a hug or in the crunch of gravel on our way to get a hug, it is still love. When we come home late or leave lunch too quickly we have an opportunity to notice our affection for one another if, like the anonymous briefcase-carrier or Kusatao treading the gravel, we can be poets and record the moment. Kusatao's haiku is the finer poem, dealing in loss and anticipation, and manifesting these in the heat of the sun, the crunch of the gravel. But the spouses hugging the briefcase and the senryu poet who records that hug are not to be scorned either. SENRYU IN THE WEST The Japanese senryu has been relatively unknown in the West. But early translators of Japanese hokku presented work by several pre-basho poets as well as by Basho and later poets. Thus many of the hokku and haikai first seen in the West exhibited the playful, often witty characteristics of haikai-no-renga before Basho" added depth and seriousness to the genre. This, and Chamberlain's use of the word "epigram" in connection with the hokku, led Westerners to emphasize wit, and pay less attention to capturing real experience, when they composed their own poems on Japanese models. People familiar with both Japanese haiku and senryu find many such poems closer to senryu than to haiku.

246 232 Before and Beyond Haiku These examples from Chapter 4, Early Haiku in the West, might well be called senryu: The train was coming; I had a kiss all ready: the train left... Jean Baucomont Among her twenty rouges she searches for a full pot: turned to stone. Rainer Maria Rilke Examples abound of senryu-like poems written by Westerners who thought they were writing haiku. When the Committee on Definitions of the Haiku Society of America completed its work in the early 1970s, they included the following as one definition of senryu: "Loosely, a poem similar to haiku which does not meet the criteria for haiku." Although I was a member of that committee, I do not like suggesting that a senryu is a failed haiku. In the hands of those who set out to write a senryu, such as one-time editor of American Haiku Clement Hoyt, a senryu "relies on a point of wit instead of provocation by contrast, as does the haiku." (From his article "Haiku and Senryu"; his emphasis.) A senryu of his may help to establish the point: While the guests order, the table cloth hides his hands counting his money. Like Hoyt, American poet Sydell Rosenberg writes both haiku and senryu, and is best known for the latter. For example: Library closing the sleeping wino wakes up holding a shut book And why not? The wino's eyes also were shut. From one point of view the wino has usurped the library, or at least the book, by not reading it. From another, the purpose of the library has been expanded, so it is now a more useful place, and more human.

247 BEYOND HAIKU 233 There is a perverse steadfastness in human nature, which forms the core of this poem by Virginia Brady Young: In a tight skirt a woman sweeping leaves into the wind. Occasionally humanity's steadfastness, its insistence upon its own nature, reaches cosmic proportions. Michael McClintock has dutifully commemorated this fact, especially as it refers to haiku, in the following senryu, which seems a fit place to close our discussion of the genre: the old pond: all the little croaks keep on frogging For those who wish to pursue the Japanese senryu, a few books in English are listed in Resources. Most of the English language haiku magazines also publish senryu, in part because many Western editors have a hard time distinguishing between senryu and haiku, and partly because it is not always easy to place a poem in one genre or the other. Many poems, both Japanese and Western, can be read either way, like Virginia Brady Young's leaf-sweeper. FROM RENGA TO HAIKU SEQUENCES In Japan poets early discovered that they could collect short lyrics in groups that worked together by subject, theme, language, and so on. Before Petrarch or Sir Philip Sidney celebrated their loves with extended sonnet sequences, Otomo no Tabito ( ) and his son Yakamochi ( ?) wrote tanka sequences in praise of wine and a garden, respectively, which are recorded in the Many-

248 234 Before and Beyond Haiku OshU. Each of the tanka in these groups presents a different aspect of the subject itself or of the poet's thought on the subject. While an order that "makes sense" may appear here and there in these "sequences", many of the poems could be taken in any order without loss of impact. By the time of the KokinshU (completed about 905) a new way of ordering poems, particularly tanka, had come into use. In the KokinshU itself, and in many later anthologies, poems are placed so that certain relationships between them add to the reader's enjoyment. Often poems by contemporaries appear next to others much older. Reading one of these anthologies is like reading a dialogue with continuously changing participants from many eras. And as in a good conversation, many different topics and themes arise, shift, and fade away as they are replaced by others. This method of ordering a large number of tanka probably had a great deal to do with determining the ideals of renga composition, where the poets create a fabric of shifting images and themes that pleases them in the act of composition itself. Not surprisingly, Iio Sogi ( ), the greatest master of classical renga, was the best known scholar of the KokinshU and its tanka in his generation. In anthologies of renga individual hokku were collected in seasonal sections. The editors who assembled these hokku ordered them in ways similar to the carefully built relationships in the tanka anthologies. In the meantime renga became more stilted. Masaoka Shiki concentrated on haiku and tanka, publishing diaries with sequences of tanka or haiku on a particular topic, and independent sequences as well. Shiki also decreed the death of renga prematurely and the combined effect seems to have spurred the creation of haiku sequences among modern poets. Today Japanese haiku poets distinguish between two types of haiku sequences. One is the gunsaku, that resembles the earliest tanka sequences in which one subject or theme is examined from many angles. Kaneko Tota's haiku on the green bear, toward the

249 BEYOND HAIKU 235 end of Chapter 3, Modern Japanese Haiku, are from a group such as this. While the poems come in a particular order, simply because writing and reading them must proceed in time, each is really quite free to stand alone, and one might easily suggest another order without disturbing the meaning of any one haiku or of the group taken together. The other type of sequence, called rensaku, contains haiku which are not intended to stand alone, and which gather meaning from the context of the whole sequence. The conscious use of rensaku technique in composing haiku sequences seems to have been borrowed from the practice of some modern tanka poets, particularly Saito Mokichi ( ), noted for a long series of tanka dealing with the final illness and death of his mother. Quoting a few pieces from such an extended work would not give the effect, but Mokichi creates a full-fledged psychological narrative using very realistic tanka to present a series of vignettes.* Japanese haiku poets have rarely produced anything approaching narrative haiku sequences, but the rensaku mode, in which individual haiku become in effect stanzas of a longer poem, flourished in the 1930s and 1940s. A particularly strong example was written by Tomizawa Kakio ( ) while he was serving in the engineer corps of the Japanese army. He had been drafted in 1926, and spent from 1937 to 1940 in China, attaining a battlefield commission as lieutenant. Kakio had gained some notice as a haiku poet before he went to China, but spent quite a while there writing little or nothing. Eventually he came upon an oil lamp, intact, in the city of Teian. Soon, during a withdrawal, he was forced to leave the lamp behind. After losing it, *A good translation of Mokichi's entire tanka sequence, "Mother Dies", appears in Sato and Watson, From the Country of Eight Islands; see the introduction to Resources.

250 236 Before and Beyond Haiku he wrote the following rensaku for his eldest daughter, Junko. I have used the step-down tercets of William Carlos Williams, with an adaptation of his "variable foot", to preserve the original integrity of the haiku stanzas while indicating the wholeness of the composition taken as a single work. The short preface suggests that the poem replaces the lamp itself as Kakio's gift to his daughter. Junko! A little Chinese lamp Papa picked up! the setting sun brushes the chimney of a Chinese lamp soon in the lamp the battlefield's deep gloom comes! the light's small while alive my shadow is thick foot steps clop-clopping in the lamp gun shots splat-splattering in the lamp lighting up just like Junko the little lamp this lamp being a small thing makes one think! awakened from the straw: a little chilly lamp

251 BEYOND HAIKU 237 One commentator notes that Kakio's homesickness is shown in his "unique sensations and illusions". If we look at the order of the haiku stanzas, these sensations and illusions fall into an unalterable dramatic structure. This is a psychological history of Kakio's relationship with the lamp, which begins with simple physical perceptions, but soon involves his own body image and some of the most dreaded sensations of war. Coming out of the macabre and self-pity, he thinks how his daughter's face lights up with a smile, then realizes that the lamp has brought him out of the war for a moment. Finally, the light of the lamp flickers and dies in his consciousness, returning him to the war itself, the reality that surrounds and penetrates the poem. WESTERN SEQUENCES AND NARRATIVES Many Western poets have written groups of haiku exploring various aspects of one subject or theme. One of the more successful early practitioners of the haiku sequence in Europe was the Spanish poet Antonio Machado. Here are the first two sections from a nine-section sequence in his Nuevas Canciones (New Songs, ): from Apuntes from Sketches i Desde mi vent ana, \campo de Baeza, a la luna claral \Montes de Cazorla, Aznaitfn y Miiginal \De luna y de piedra tambie'n los cachorros de Sierra Morena! i From my window the fields of Baeza, in the clear moonlight! The mountains of Cazorla, Aznaitin and Magina! Of moon and stone also, the whelps of Sierra Morena!

252 238 Before and Beyond Haiku II Sobre el olivar, se vi6 a la lechuza volar y volar. Campo, campo, campo. Entre los olivos, los cortijos blancos. Y la encina negra, a medio camino de Ubeda a Baeza. II Over the olive grove, seen like a barn owl to hover and hover. Fields, fields, fields. Among the olive trees, the white farmhouses. And the black oak, halfway along the road From Ubeda to Baeza. The sections of "Apuntes" do not all contain the same number of verses, and several of the verses do not resemble haiku, although all are highly imagistic. But those quoted above and many others seem a cross between haiku and siguiriya, the short lyric outburst characteristic of Andalusian song so dear to Federico Garcia Lorca. While the siguiriya typically deals with love between man and woman, in these verses of Machado we see his love of the countryside. Aside from the namelessness that hovers over the olive grove (the moon? the spirit of the place?), the language is more direct, more strictly presentational than that of Kakio's rensaku on the Chinese lamp. But the verses within each section of "Apuntes" do not seem to have a fixed and necessary order like that of Kakio's- sequence. In terms of the Japanese classification, we would call "Apuntes" a long poem containing, among other things, a number of gunsaku haiku sequences portraying the region of Baeza, southern Spain. When the poet and scholar Robert Hay den's book The Night- Blooming Cereus came out in 1972 it contained the following haiku sequence:

253 BEYOND HAIKU 239 Smelt Fishing i In the cold spring night the smelt are spawning. Sportsmen fevered crowd the lake. II Thin snow scatters on the wind, melting as it falls. Cries for help for light. Ill Who is he nightwaters entangle, reclaim? Blank ftsh-eyes. Hayden's fame as a poet will continue to rest on his great evocation of the horror of the slave trade in "Middle Passage" and the compassion of such poems as "The Whipping", written well before this small group of haiku. But Hayden put as much skill and passion into these small pieces of a gripping narrative as he did into any other poem he wrote. In the first haiku the dampness and cold of the spring night contrast vividly with the heat of animal activity two kinds of animals. Next the cold and the dampness deepen as thick snowflakes land. There is a sudden commotion of fishermen's cries through the wind-blown, wet snow. Then it is over; someone has gone under the water, and remains there. The lyrical voice of the poet intrudes, to be summarily met with the calm indifference of nature, caring no more for a human dragged under water than for a fish dragged above it. This is an unalterable sequence. The first haiku could stand alone and be fully intelligible but it pulls us onward. We only come to fully understand the action of verse II and the depth of III in the light of the previous verses. By 1974 Haiku Magazine devoted several pages to haiku sequences, many of them narratives. Today virtually all of the

254 240 Before and Beyond Haiku English language haiku magazines publish sequences of haiku, most of which fall into one of three categories. Some, like the Japanese gunsaku or the "Apuntes" of Antonio Machado, portray various aspects of a particular subject or topic in relatively independent haiku. Others seem to fall between the rensaku Japanese poets were writing in the 1930s and 1940s and the sort of tightly structured narrative exemplified in Hayden's "Smelt Fishing". And, during the last decade or so, several haiku sequences have appeared that consist of poems which can stand separately, but which are linked to one another in much the same way as the stanzas in a renga. The following sequence of one-line haiku was assembled from notes taken during a 1966 trip to Africa; the piece was worked up over a long period of time and finally published in a 1981 issue of Frogpond. Here is Elizabeth Searle Lamb's A Sequence from Lagos, Nigeria mosquitoes in airport's hot moist air hum "dash me, dash me" all the kids begging ha'pennies a mammy-wagon named Daddy Come Soon rattling down the street after drinking palm wine young men toss down empty gourds the 16 Palm Nuts thrown to fall 'according to the will of Ifa' how cold the bronze this ancient Benin warrior way back in the market's chattering crush a street vendor sleeping in a doorway monkey skull his candle burning

255 BEYOND HAIKU 241 the storyteller turns round to pee into the dusk into the deepest of the nightdark the talking drums A variety of resonances holds all these images together. The swarming, humming mosquitoes become the swarming, shouting children. One characteristic expression leads to another, as children's cries give way to the noise of a rattletrap bus carrying its vivid name and ladies who sell their wares to market. The bus finds its echo in the rattling of gourds. Falling gourds immediately become palm nuts, thrown in careful ritual, as some look for their fortunes in divination while others drink theirs. The will of Ifa suggests the warrior's fate, and the clatter and crash of ancient warfare suggest the bustle of the marketplace itself, which yields another silent relic of noisier days. As the market grows quiet, a street vendor falls asleep, his life almost hard to detect in the lengthening shadows, dimly pierced by candlelight. Yet there is activity in the shadows, as a storyteller pauses in pouring out his tale to pour out another sign of life. And the drops spattering in 'the dust find their deeper echo in another form of communication as old as the story itself, the talking drums. Part of the excitement of Lamb's sequence, for me at least, comes from the earthiness and exoticism of the images to one raised in a large modern city. But that excitement is greatly enhanced by the skillful shifting that takes place from one image to the next. While each seems perfectly natural to its time and place, and to the sequence of events from daylight to dark, the inner connections from verse to verse raise their own excitement. Whether I analyze them or not, these inner connections are psychologically "right", in effect discovering and capitalizing on the archetypal sensations embedded in each minute experience. BEYOND HAIKU? Since the kinds of writing discussed in this chapter developed after the era of Basho, who the Japanese consider the father of

256 242 Before and Beyond Haiku haiku, I have called the chapter Beyond Haiku. But the independent hokku-become-haiku and the independent tsukekubecome-senryu share a common beginning in renga. And the haiku sequence, of whatever variety, derives from the impulse to group individual perceptions in ways that are aesthetically pleasing the foundation of renga. In effect, this handbook should be called Beyond Renga, since all but a few of its topics derive from renga directly or indirectly. If the single image, the elemental fibre of human perception, is like haiku or senryu, then human understanding and pleasure result from the bringing together of these fibres into the stronger cords of renga. The Japanese that initiated, nurtured, and enjoyed the renga for several centuries developed a powerful unity of spirit and aesthetic. This aesthetic spirit pervades many aspects of Japanese society, not just those associated with haiku, senryu, and so on. Perhaps by studying one or another of these branches of literature we can develop our own understanding of and participation in this spirit.

257 16 The Uses of Haiku WHY THIS CHAPTER? Chapter 10, Sharing Haiku, offers writers a number of suggestions for sharing their haiku. Readers will find other books of haiku listed in Resources, following this chapter. But beyond the sharing that is the heart of haiku, and all literature, there are several specific ways that the haiku has helped people with a wide variety of interests. In particular, the haiku has served as an introduction to other subjects, and as a means of learning and using several skills. Since haiku involve two basic acts, reading and writing, the bulk of this chapter approaches the uses of haiku in one or the other of these two ways. This is something of an artificial distinction, for both reading and writing are parts of one larger process, language. I hope that readers will find ideas of interest to them in the section for writers, and vice-versa. Teachers, whether of language, literature, history, or the social sciences, should find much here to take them beyond the simple introductions to the writing of haiku found in Part Three of this book. For literature exists because people write, and put life into their writings. And that life goes far beyond literature itself. 243

258 244 Before and Beyond Haiku FOR THE READER Reading haiku helps us to respect the experience of others. Through reading haiku we can come to know the sensations and events which have moved fellow human beings. We can begin to understand again how deeply human beings in all times and places identify with the environment in which they live, and the creatures that live there with them, as in this excellent haiku in Arabic by Abdelhadi Barchale, of Casablanca, Morocco: t, a snail on the stones J **" <,mf \J \J*+*~0^ advances with care. t, %. autumn draws to an end. y "J Robert Bly, in an essay called "Dropping the Reader", offers both a justification for the writing of a short poem, and some thoughts on the benefits of reading a short poem. Here is part of it: Most of the emotions we have are brief: they appear suddenly and vanish. They are part of the swift life of the intelligence... A brief poem does without the scaffolding of secondary ideas. Because of this, it moves more swiftly than the longer poem and with more intellectual exhilaration.... In the brief poem... the poet takes the reader to the edge of a cliff, as a mother eagle takes its nestling, and then drops him. Readers with a strong imagination enjoy it, and discover they can fly. The others fall down to the rocks where they are killed instantly. The writer of a short poem and particularly a haiku invites the reader to take off, to become dynamically involved in the poetic process. As with music, the poem only begins in the writ-

259 THE USES OF HAIKU 245 ing, and finds its completion in a process that includes the sounding of the poem in the reader or hearer's mind, and the echoes it awakens there. While a haiku itself is brief and extremely limited in what it directly presents, the responses to a haiku are not. In the late 1960s I had the honor of the author's help in translating a Japanese newspaper article called "My Favorite Poems From the Traveler's Heart". In it Takahashi Nobuyuki quotes a poem by Kawamoto Gafu, haiku master and editor of Itadori magazine, and offers his own response to Gafu's poem: akashiya no by the acacia's shiroku oki na large, white blossoms nana ni furare fallen on... This poem calls to mind the figure of the poet, tall and at ease, and imparts to me the calm of having returned from a long journey. The poem, ending with the passive "fallen on", shows exactly the position and attitude of the relaxed writer. The combination of such a poet and the large, white blossoms causes me to remember Fugen Bodhisattva mounted on a white elephant or seated upon a white lotus bloom, giving me the feeling of having returned to the home of the spirit. Then, too, perhaps I may recall the roadside acacias of my childhood, passed in Dairen, China, and the lifetime of my father. The haiku triggers our own thoughts and memories based on our own experiences. Here Professor Takahashi responds to Gafu's poem with a picture of the poet in "the calm of having returned from a long journey". Then the image of the poet in his mind shifts to that of Fugen Bodhisattva, who is associated with white through the elephant and the lotus. This image moves Professor Takahashi to the "home of the spirit". Now he remembers his childhood home, where acacias bloomed, and his father in those days. In each of these mental images the figure represents author-

260 246 Before and Beyond Haiku ity, and the flowers are associated with the calmness, the comfort of home in the poet's return, the spiritual home, the childhood home. Haiku teach us not only to respect the experience of others, but to recall and treasure our own experience. In letting his mind contemplate Gafu's haiku, Professor Takahashi discovered connections among poetry, religion, and his own personal history. May we all learn to find such rich rewards in our own reading! Aside from the deeply personal rewards of reading haiku, the study of the Japanese haiku in this or any book on the subject quickly leads to other, related subjects. Obviously, haiku is a good place to begin the study of Japanese poetry. Many other aspects of Japanese culture gradually reveal themselves to the student of haiku, as well. But haiku has been important in much of modern world literature, and studying it will help us understand not only the techniques of some modern writers, but some of the aspects of life and literature which they found important. Despite its brevity, and the difficulty which that creates for many mature Westerners (it is not usually a difficulty for children), the haiku genre rewards a conscientious student more quickly than almost any other kind of Japanese poetry. Some Japanese haiku require a considerable understanding of other Chinese and Japanese literature before their meaning becomes clear. But many are fully understandable on first reading. The history and technique of haiku place it central among the other genres of Japanese poetry. From haiku, as this book suggests, one can branch out to explore the intricacies of the closely allied renga and senryu, and begin to look at the deep tradition of the tanka. Indeed, the earliest tanka remind one of haiku, with their directness and simplicity. Also, the haibun relates to a variety of Japanese prose writings, particularly the long tradition of poetic travel journals and diaries. Finally, the history of haiku since the beginning of the influx of Western literature into Japan gives a window on the upheavals in all of Japanese literature during the modern era. Thus haiku offers one of the best places to begin studying Japanese literature.

261 THE USES OF HAIKU 247 As the amount of haiku activity in Japan today suggests, haiku is also a major manifestation of Japanese culture generally. For example, those who wish to understand the underlying principles of traditional Japanese art would do well to begin with the study of haiku painting, called haiga. The haiku poet Buson was one of the finest painters of his day, a pillar of the Nanga, "Southern Style", or Bunjinga, "Literati Style" of painting, and a master of haiga. Haiga involve a spare, sketch-like picture and a haiku in calligraphy in the same piece of art. Such scrolls and art objects frequently grace the focal center of the main room in a traditional Japanese house, and usually provide the only visual relief in the plain room reserved for the famous Japanese tea ceremony. An understanding of this poetry and art will put one in the correct frame of mind for participating in the ceremony, so some knowledge of Japanese poetry and painting becomes necessary for the full appreciation of the ritual. Similarly, many of the Japanese traditional arts, but particularly the haiku, have a special connection with Zen Buddhism. Indeed, some authors, such as D. T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, seem unable to mention haiku without noting what they see as its characteristic Zen. This point of view also dominates the works of R. H. Blyth. While I have not emphasized the connection in this handbook, ignoring it would be like ignoring the connection of Christianity with the paintings of Michelangelo and the music of J. S. Bach. Christianity undoubtedly had much to do with many of the arts of Western Europe, not only providing artists with their subject matter in many cases, but helping to create the world view from which their artistry grew. To this extent one may study Japanese haiku as part of the milieu which flowered from the interaction of native Japanese culture and the culture and religion imported from Korea and China. This interaction resulted in many adaptations of continental government, philosophy, art, religion (including Zen), and literature to the needs of the Japanese sensibility. Along with Buddhism, Zen or otherwise, we can find Confu-

262 248 Before and Beyond Haiku danism in haiku. For example, there is Shiki's junen no ten years' kugaku ke no naki hard study threadbare mofu kana * this blanket the first four words of which (three in the original) Shiki quotes directly from the Confucian Analects. Thus Shiki pays homage to Confucius and notes the long devotion which he has given to the study of haiku, in spite of hardship. His wry humor adds a hint of Japanese spice to the otherwise Chinese flavor of this verse. Beyond Japanese culture, haiku has been important for many Western poets, from Pound and Ginsberg to Eluard and Seferis, each of whom wrote haiku during their early decades in the art of poetry. Some critics have maintained that these Western poets have only poorly understood haiku, and that haiku was relatively unimportant in their development. As far as the poets' understanding of haiku goes, the following quotation should help set the record straight. The writer is John Gould Fletcher, a colleague of Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell during the days of Imagism in London; he is introducing the first book to contain both translations of Japanese haiku and an extensive selection of original haiku in English, Kenneth Yasuda's A Pepper-Pod, published in Fletcher tells, directly and simply, what modern Western poetry owes to haiku: The only difference between the Japanese haiku poet and the Western... poets is this: the Japanese is content to suggest an object, and leaves the resulting emotion for the reader to complete in his own mind. The Western poet states the emotion, along with the object or objects that provoked it; and frequently in stating his emotion, he overdoes it. I cannot imagine a better critique of much eighteenth and nineteenth century Western poetry, or introduction to that of the

263 THE USES OF HAIKU 249 twentieth. From the Imagists on, the better Western poets of our era have largely tried to present the causes of their emotions, clean of the emoting that clutters so much earlier work. Not only poets, but novelists and essayists have been influenced by haiku. Among modern Japanese fiction writers, Natsume Soseki ( ), Akutagawa Ryunosuke ( ), and Kawabata Yasunari ( ) have all been intimately connected with haiku throughout their careers. Soseki and Akutagawa (as they are usually called in Western critical writing, using the pen name of one and the surname of the other) both wrote and published haiku regularly. The story-telling impulse can be seen in some of their haiku: kao arau tarai ni tatsu aki no kage face-washing in the basin rises autumn's shadow Soseki arijigoku ant lion's trap kage shite botan making shade, the peony hana akaki blossom is red Gaki (Akutagawa's haiku pen name) Although Kawabata was not widely known as a haiku poet, he occasionally wrote some, and his novels dwell on the minute details of everyday life with an aesthetic distance akin to that of the haiku. Among Western novelists Jack Kerouac stands out as the one most interested in haiku. As noted in Chapter 5, The Haiku Movement in English, his Dharma Bums introduced haiku to many American readers; it also portrays his own introduction to the genre, which was to figure so strongly in the early portion of Desolation Angels. The irony and humor that pervade much of Kerouac's writing also came out in his "haikus", particularly his senryu:

264 250 Before and Beyond Haiku Missing a kick at the icebox door It closed anyway. Western essayists, too, have fallen under the spell of Japanese literature, and particularly the haiku. Lafcadio Hearn ( ) was already a lover of the macabre before he arrived in Japan and collected a number of Japanese folk tales and weird stories. But the style of Japanese haiku may have influenced his prose, which seems more lucid and free of unnecessary decoration in the books he wrote in Japan. An extreme example, perhaps, is his diary of a climb up Mount Fuji, in Exotics and Retrospectives; here is a short, haibun-like excerpt: Open country with scattered clumps of trees, larch and pine. Nothing in the horizon but scraggy tree-tops above what seems to be the rim of a vast down [i.e., hill]. No sign of Fuji... For the first time I noticed that the road is black, black sand and cinders apparently, volcanic cinders: the wheels of the kuruma [i.e., cart] and the feet of the runners sink into it with a crunching sound. The rain has stopped, and the sky becomes a clearer gray.... The trees decrease in size and number as we advance. (Ellipses as in the original.) Pretty crisp language for a book published in 1898! The last part is like a concluding haiku. Most recently, the French critic Roland Barthes ( ) found in haiku an epitome of Japanese culture, and devoted a major portion of one of his last books, Empire of Signs, to a discussion of haiku that seems more relevant to Barthes' ideas about language than to haiku itself. In effect the haiku illuminates his thought, rather than the other way around. Perhaps that is as he wished it. The haiku, with its apparent simplicity and directness, helped to generate and points to a vast body of literature written by

265 THE USES OF HAIKU 251 people who intend to be understood. The whole of literature is like an endless net; pick it up at any knotting of the strands, and you find yourself connected to all the rest. FOR THE WRITER For the writer haiku brings direct and immediate rewards. Writing haiku claims and confirms one's experience of the world, and offers an opportunity to construct ideal experiences which enrich one's inner life. Haiku poets must clarify their language, due to the imposed brevity, and they must base their writing in images, the most powerful tool of all writing. Whether Japanese or Western, haiku poets enter directly into an experience of Japanese culture, art, and thought at a level that long-term visitors in Japan may never achieve. Deeply understood, the act of writing haiku affords an opportunity for meditation that may be a rewarding philosophical or religious experience. Canadian haiku poet and physician George Swede, in an article entitled "The Role of Haiku in Poetry Therapy", says: Haiku is a poetic form which avoids the use of metaphor, simile, and other poetic devices, obtaining its effects primarily through the juxtaposition of sensory impressions. If done successfully, this juxtaposition creates a moment of acute awareness about the external world. The person wrapped up in himself is forced outward to a consideration of the unity of nature. While there is certainly subjectivity in writing a haiku, the act usually involves trying hard to see, and to remember accurately what one has seen; to hear, and so on. While the pathologically self-involved may need this discipline, I suspect that we all could use some of it. They say Gautama Siddhartha was a very rich young man, and that only after he left the confines of his luxurious home and gazed on the commoners' world outside did he

266 252 Before and Beyond Haiku begin the long seeking that resulted in Buddhahood. I take this as a parable for the fact that only after we examine the minute particulars of our daily lives can we come to a knowledge of "life". Perhaps the many persons who find themselves bored with their lives could come to enjoy them through writing haiku. Shiki suggested that haiku poets write mainly from their actual, direct experience. But even he allowed fiction into haiku, and the Buson he admired was a master at creating fantasy haiku. This does not mean that haiku should go beyond the realistic possibilities of this world, but that one may, on occasion, create a new experience in the process of making haiku. Here is how I wrote one such poem: Walking home from the post office, I heard for some moments a metal wind chime tinkling in the wind. I recalled that it was the day of the winter solstice, so I started to construct a haiku with the words "solstice... wind in the / wind chimes". Still hearing the wind chimes, I noticed the smell of wood smoke. Though it was earlier, I decided to place the experience at dusk, a time when wood smoke is more smelled than seen. When I got home I played around with a few versions, at one point writing: winter solstice dusk smoke in the wind in the wind chimes As I was repeating my written versions aloud, I realized that the word "smoke" alone provided a visual image rather than the scent of wood smoke I had experienced. So I added "wood" to the formation. While writing and sounding a few different arrangements with "wood smoke" my own wooden wind chimes came to mind, providing a sound that I preferred to the brassier wind chimes I had actually heard.

267 THE USES OF HAIKU 253 Now I had moved time forward an hour or so from afternoon to dusk, and changed the wind chimes from metal to wood. Recalling that in the original experience the sound of wind chimes had preceded the smell of wood smoke, I reorganized the images in an order closer to the original experience. Since the words "winter solstice" weighed the poem down more than a haiku can stand, but I wanted the sense of the solstice in it, I decided to title the haiku, something not done very often. The final haiku: Winter Solstice wooden wind chimes in the wind in the wood smoke dusk This haiku combines associations that I have not in fact encountered all together. Whenever I smell wood smoke I recall my grandmother's cottage in the trees and its wood stove. The words "dusk" and "smoke" set up a special resonance for me with their elemental sounds. Dusk on the day of the winter solstice comes early, accentuating our desire to be at home by the fire. Wind and wood smoke also suggest to me wind roaring through the trees high overhead, as I often experienced them at my grandmother's. And all this is suffused with the rare music of wooden wind chimes, bringing to mind the entrance of the Chinese block in Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta". These images reawaken in me the joys that I have had at such moments in my life, and combine to create a new moment in my imagination to join the rest. Taking up the haiku will help us make our language more accurate, base our writing in images, and cut our words to the essentials. Gwendolyn Brooks, who began her own "Poets in the Prisons" program, visiting inmates who were trying to write long before it became fashionable or remunerative to do so, introduced

268 254 Before and Beyond Haiku Etheridge Knight to haiku. Later, Knight said: my poems/were/too 'prosy' too filled with 'abstractions' rather/than/images... I really got into haiku when I learned (read/or/"heard" somewhere) that the "original" haiku poets/were in to haiku primarily as/an/oral/being and the "written" poem as secondary as simply an/ extension of the spoken word... During his stay in prison Knight taught himself to write striking poems, and his haiku are no exception: Under moon shadows A tall boy flashes knife and Slices star bright ice. The Penal Farm The wire fence is tall. The lights in the prison barracks Flick off, one by one. Haiku poets who are open enough to let it happen can join Selma Stefanile, for whom "Sometimes the haiku impulse works as my 'touchstone' towards a [different kind of] poem." When we set out to write a haiku we may have to give up that objective and let the poem come as it must, as in this tanka-like piece of hers, which probably began as an attempt at haiku: Wabash the old rowboat will rest on the bank under the sycamore all winter the doll in the fishnet

269 THE USES OF HAIKU 255 The experience of writing haiku undoubtedly accounts for the sharpness of the images and language in Stefanile's other poems as well as in her haiku. Those who write haiku in Japanese or any other language come to know a bit of Japanese art and thought from the inside. How deeply the practice of haiku permeates Japanese life may be seen from these comments by Fujiwara Noburo, made during an interview with Lucien Stryk a few years ago. Noburo, then fifty, is a member of the Tenro School of haiku, and a practicing Zen Buddhist. Like all children I learnt about [haiku] in school, was strongly drawn to them, especially Basho's. We were encouraged from time to time to write our own, as a form of writing exercise leading to the cultivation of good style. The practical element was emphasized, the rules held all important the spirit of the poems only occasionally looked into... What [the leaders of the Tenro School of haiku] tell us is every place is full of poetry. All one has to do is go find the poems... We select an interesting and beautiful place and, on the spot, compose its poetry.... The main thing is we really open our eyes, whether or not good poems come and so discover a spirit there. We're made aware through active seeking of the presence of poetry all around us, begin, slowly to be sure, to see our personal world in the same spirit... [Regarding the clarity and directness of Japanese art:] I suspect it has much to do with our attempt to discover essences about which Zen teaches us more than anything else. Take a sumie work [black-ink painting]: purely the essence of a scene, details absorbed, harmonized. In haiku it's the same a weeding out of all that would clutter, muddy, confuse, leading to great incisiveness, clear

270 256 Before and Beyond Haiku purpose. What we are looking for, guided by Zen, is revelation... [To the question, "Why do you write haiku?"] Because I love haiku, and because I am Japanese; it expresses the spirit of our people. It makes one feel part of something essential to the culture of our nation. A glimmer of the depth of the tradition Noburo feels himself part of may be seen in the following haiku by Yamaguchi Seishi, founder of the Tenro School: hanano ni wa in the flower-field iwa ari kubo ari are rocks, are hollows, hana arite and are flowers Japanese, and those of Japanese descent living outside of Japan, have practiced haiku wherever they found themselves, thus retaining one of the deepest and most characteristic features of their culture despite the trials their ethnicity may have caused them. Earlier I mentioned Kenneth Yasuda's book, A Pepper-Pod, with his translations of Japanese haiku and original haiku in English. Yasuda, an American citizen born in California, was studying Japanese literature in Japan when he broke off his studies and came home shortly before the war between Japan and the United States erupted. Toward the end of the war he was forced from his home and imprisoned in "relocation centers" in Arkansas and Wyoming, losing all his possessions in the process. Despite the violence between nations, Yasuda continued to work at adapting his ancestral culture to the landscape and language of his homeland. The delicacy of his best work shows in these haiku, originally written in English, from A Pepper-Pod: The Rain Tenderly again On the peony I hear Whispers of the rain.

271 THE USES OF HAIKU 257 Irises Irises in bloom, Soon the white one too will fade Into the gathering gloom. The Mississippi River Under the low grey Winter skies water pushes Water on its way. Another Japanese-American, Soichi Furuta, has written both as a translator and poet of haiku. Furuta, who lives in New York City, writes in both Japanese and English and translates both ways a wide variety of work, much of it published both here and in Japan. He composes his haiku in Japanese; here are a pair with his own translations, written originally to accompany the photographs of Frank Dituri and appearing in their book, a man never becoming a line, published in 1979: koto kurete chozo no ashi torihada su gam no ichigei aki no yare posuta a late day in Vienna I come upon statues' bare legs goose-fleshed a guru leering right out of a torn poster in autumn light, In 1981 The Coach House Press in Toronto published one of the finest anthologies of poetry by those of Japanese descent yet seen on this continent. From among poems in many styles by Japanese-Canadian authors, here are three of the several haiku included by editors Gerry Shikatani and David Aylward, with Aylward's translations into English:

272 258 Before and Beyond Haiku rokkiisan yogiri oto naku kayote naku Soundless Rocky Mountain foggy night: Coyote's cry. Takeo Ujo Nakano momo taburu warabe ubu ge no maruki hoho asatsuyu ni' shimeri chusha no ihanhyo Peach munching kiddies' downy round cheeks Soaked in morning dew a parking ticket Tomi Nishimura Chasabura Kosha Ito Whether one is a Westerner or a Japanese, the exercises of reading and writing haiku bring a wide range of personal benefits, some intellectual and aesthetic, some practical. FOR THE EARTH The arts have always transcended national boundaries, as this book demonstrates for the haiku. The haiku has also been a democratizing force; since before Basho's day people of all levels of society have written what we call haiku. As people within a society, or in different societies, share with one another the objects and events that mean something in their lives they come

273 THE USES OF HAIKU 259 to know one another better. Perhaps the haiku, in its small way, will help us toward a world with greater understanding among all people, of whatever class or nation. Haiku reading and writing can lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation for life, and in particular for our environment. When Mori Sumio writes of the few geese migrating overhead he recalls that in former days geese were much more plentiful, as reflected in both his own memory and the whole span of Japanese literature. Perhaps through his poem we will come to reflect upon the loss of geese in the modern world, and this may motivate us to "live more lightly on the earth" as some American Indians have expressed it. According to Basho, putting our eyes and our thoughts on nature is the highest refinement of civilization. Here is how he expressed it in Oi no kobumi (Notes of a Pack-Basket), a travel diary written in , a year or two after the "old pond" haiku. Saigyo and Sogi we have already met; Sesshu ( ) was a great Zen painter; Sen no Rikyu ( ) the greatest master of the tea ceremony. Basho has told how the way of poetry came to dominate his life; now he allies himself with the tradition of all high art, and explains its source: Through the waka of Saigyo, the renga of Sogi, the painting of Sesshu, and the tea of Rikyu, one thing flows. People of such refinement submit to nature and befriend the four seasons. Where they look is nothing but flowers, what they think is nothing but the moon. Perceiving shapes other than flowers amounts to being a barbarian. Holding thoughts other than the moon is akin to being a beast. Come out from barbarians, depart from beasts. Submit to nature, return to nature.

274

275 REFERENCE SECTION N

276

277 Season-Word List and Index Chapter 7, Nature and Haiku, gives the rationale behind seasonal topics (kidai) in traditional Japanese poetry. A season-word list collects the "season words" (kigo) poets have used to incorporate kidai in their poems, and organizes these words for reference. The list below contains about 600 words and phrases, arranged in their traditional seasons and categories. By Japanese standards this is a very short list, but I have saved space by leaving out all kigo which name the season, except those in the poems translated in this handbook. This list is also an index to the Japanese haiku and tanka in the handbook which have traditional season words; their page numbers follow the entry where appropriate. However, this index does not work for Japanese poems without season words, or for Western-language poems. Each entry gives the Japanese kigo, followed by a relatively literal English translation (with an explanation in parentheses, if needed). Occasionally, where two Japanese terms have the same meaning I have placed them together with a slant between. A comma separates equally valid translations, with the first usually 263

278 264 Reference Section the more literal. If the word "or" separates two meanings, they are quite different, and only context will show which is intended. In a few instances I have saved space by judicious use of parentheses. Square brackets indicate a meaning not justified in the Japanese words, but which a Japanese reader will normally assume. Traditional analysts organize kidai and kigo into one of six or seven categories within each season. I have chosen a relatively conservative breakdown, including: jiko (season, climate) the most basic seasonal phenomena relating to time and temperature; tenmon (astronomy) all sky phenomena, precipitation, winds; chiri (geography) surface phenomena, on land and water; gyoji* (observances) sacred and secular holidays; seikatsu* (livelihood, life) human work, play, and rest; dobutsu (animals) from mammals and birds to bugs and worms; shokubutsu (plants) flowers and foliage from trees to seaweed. A few moments spent perusing one season from beginning to end will familiarize you with the organization. The New Year a holiday period traditionally combining features of such Western celebrations as Bastille Day or the Fourth of July, Christmas or Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, and, in premodern times, the beginning of spring and everyone's personal birthday has a section of its own at the end of the list, and is not divided into categories. Please note that the Japanese feel the equinoxes and solstices as the peaks of the seasons, not the beginnings of them as we do *Some authorities combine gyoji and seikatsu into jinji (human affairs).

279 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX 265 in the West. Accordingly, their seasons start more than a month before ours. I have indicated the modern months of each season at its beginning. Also note that there is no distinction between singular and plural for most nouns. In haiku, with a few exceptions, nouns should be interpreted as singular. A parenthetical s after an English translation indicates that this word should sometimes be taken as plural.

280

281 HARU JIKO saekaeru atataka uraraka nodoka(sa) nagaki hi hi no nagai osoki hi shunchtt ham no yume ham no kure natsu chikaki TENMON wasurejimo oborozuki oboroyo tsuki no kasa kasumi/kasumu usugasumi yugasumi kagero kaze hikaru kochi kunpti SPRING (February, March, April) SEASON, CLIMATE clear and cold warm bright tranquil(lity) long day day is long slow day spring noon, 38, 231 spring dream spring's end, 21, 28 summer near, 26 ASTRONOMY forgotten frost hazy moon hazy [moonlit] night halo of the moon mist/to mist, 24 thin mist evening mist heat shimmer, heat waves, 18 wind is bright east wind fragrant breeze, balmy breeze

282 268 Reference Section CHIRI yukima nokoru yuki yukidoke ukikori nadare mizu nurumu haru no mizu yama warau GYOJI. 'Saohime ise mairi kamiji yama omizutori higan chanichi nehan-e/nehanzo efumi yabuiri hina matsuri hina uri-hina SEIKATSU yoke (no) no tagayasu GEOGRAPHY between snowfalls, OT, in the snow leftover snow, 23 melting snow floating ice, ice floes snow-slide, avalanche water warms up waters of spring, 14 mountains/hills smile (i.e., with flowers) OBSERVANCES Saohime, goddess of spring (compare Flora) Ise pilgrimage Mt. Kamiji (lit., "Gods' Path Mountain"; at Ise Shrine) getting holy water equinox week, Nirvana week equinox, middle day [of higan] Nirvana picture, Nirvana portrait [of Buddha] [Christ-] picture-trampling (to demonstrate one was not Christian, during an Inquisition) Servants' Day, Menials' Day Doll Festival doll doll(s) for sale LIVELIHOOD, LIFE burnt-over field(s), 183 to plow

283 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: SPRING 269 hata (o) utsu nawashiro monotane kaiko kogai shiohi shiohigata kai hirou cha tsumi rofusagi tako fusen furakoko DOBUTSU neko no koi neko no ko momonga nezumi no su uguisu hibari agehibari kiji yamadori komadori tsubame kari/gan/kigan/ karigane kaeru kari tsuru suzume momochidori saezuri washi no su till the field, hoe the field rice-seedling field seeds silkworms tending silkworms low tide low-tide beach, 18,117 gather shells tea [leaf] picking closing the fireplace kite (the toy), 103 balloon swing ANIMALS cats in love, the love-making of cats kitten(s) flying squirrel(s) nest of mice, rats' nest nightingale, bush warbler, 98 skylark(s) soaring skylark, 103 pheasant copper pheasant robin swallow(s) [wild] geese, [wild] goose returning [wild] geese crane, stork sparrow(s), 29, 108, 187 ten thousand birds, 142 twittering [of birds] eagle's nest

284 270 shirauo awabi kato kawazu/kaeru tokage cho/kocho abu tanishi Reference Section white fish, whitebait abalone, 185 tadpoles frog(s), 9, 103, 122,126, 224, 229 lizard butterfly, 129 horse-fly paddy-snail(s), snail(s), mud-snail(s), 35 SHOKUBUTSU ume (no hana) yanagi tsubaki hatsuzakura sakura (no hana) yamazakura itozakura yaezakura sakura saku sakura chiru hana hana no kumo hana chiru chiru hana PLANTS plum (blossoms)* willow, 13 camellia [blossom(s)] first cherry [blossoms] cherry (blossoms) mountain cherry [blossoms] thread cherry, weeping cherry [blossoms] double cherry [blossoms] cherries bloom cherries [blossoms] fall [cherry] blossoms (anciently, plum) cloud(s) of [cherry] blossoms [cherry] blossoms fall, 99 falling [cherry] blossoms Unless otherwise specified, the name of a flowering tree or shrub indicates the flowers of that tree or shrub; however, the words no hana ('s blossoms) are sometimes included.

285 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: SPRING 271 rakka sakuragari hanami hana no hagoshi oigi no hana matsu (no) hana momo (no hana) nashi (no hana) anzu no hana na no hana nabatake fuji (no hana) chilrippu yamabuki bara no hana azami (no hana) tsutsuji tanpopo nazuna (hana) itadori asagao sumire (-gusa) seri kusa moyuru ko no me meudo negi no hana warabi nori fallen [cherry] blossoms cherry [-blossom-] viewing [cherry-] flower-viewing [moon] through [cherry-] blossom petals old [cherry] tree's flowers pine flowers peach (blossoms) pear (blossoms), 22 apricot blossoms mustard flowers (usually called "rape flowers" in English; the plants are similar) field(s) of mustard wisteria (blossoms) tulip(s) mountain rose(s), yellow rose(s) bramble blossoms (not to be confused with its homonym, bara, rose, a summer season word) thistle (blossom(s)), 127 azaleas dandelions shepherd's purse giant knotweed (lit., "tiger cane") morning glory violets parsley grass sprouts tree buds asparagus sprouts onion flowers bracken [edible] seaweed, laver

286 272 Reference Section NATSU JIKO natsu-mekite kacho natsu no yo mijikayo satsuki yami suzushi(sa) atsusa SUMMER (May, June, July) SEASON, CLIMATE summer-appearing, 87 summer morn, 33 summer night, 34 short night June darkness, 35 cool(ness), 19 heat TENMON kumo no mine samidare yudachi niji inazuma enten atsuki hi suzukaze asakaze kaze no kaori ASTRONOMY cloud peaks, billowing clouds June rains, 210 evening shower, sudden shower rainbow, 109 lightning, 228, 229 burning sky, burning sunshine hot sun cool breeze morning breeze wind scent, 125 CHIRI aoi yama aota shimizu yamashimizu kiyotaki natsugawa yakezuna GEOGRAPHY green hills/mountains, 30 green [rice] fields/paddies clear water, 3,13 clear mountain water clear waterfall summer river, 24 scorching sand

287 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: SUMMER 273 GYOJI kidachi ryilto nobori degawari koromogae SEIKATSU taue taue-uta take ueru amagoi mugi karu aoume ume tsukeru uchiwa/sen Ogi hirune suzumi yusuzumi/yoisuzumi aisukuriimu oyogi kayari(bi) kaya yugato shimi u ubune sushi OBSERVANCES wooden sword floating lantern, 36 [carp] banner change of servants, or, departing servant change of clothes LIVELIHOOD, LIFE [rice-] paddy-planting paddy-planting song, rice-planting song to plant bamboo prayers for rain cutting barley green plums, or, a kind of pickled plum to pickle plums fan, paper fan fan, folding fan midday nap cooling [oneself], 195 cooling at evening ice cream (Japanese word derived from English) swimming mosquito smudge mosquito net bug-trap lamp silverfish cormorant cormorant [fishing] boat sushi (a food, often taken on picnics)

288 274 Reference Section DOBUTSU ka no ko uma no ko (O)neko hototogisu kankodori kuina kawasemi aosagi shirosagi yoshikiri ayu hatsugatsuo medaka kani aogaeru/amagaeru hikigaeru/gama nomi shirami hae ka yabuka kabashira natsu no cho hotaru Obotaru ari yama-ari ha-ari semi matsu no semi hebi kumo ANIMALS fawn foal (huge) cat cuckoo, 229 cuckoo, (a different species from hototogisu) water hen, moor hen kingfisher blue heron, grey heron, 12 white heron oriole, reed warbler trout, or sweetfish first bonito killifish crab green frog(s)/rain frog(s), tree frog(s) toad fleas lice fly, flies, 17 mosquito(es), 227 bush mosquito(es) column of mosquitoes, pillar of gnats summer butterfly, 39 firefly huge firefly, 127 ants mountain ants winged ants, flying ants cicada, 11 pine cicada snake spider

289 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: SUMMER 275 haramigumo katatsumuri namekuji(ri) 8* hitorimushi bofura/bofuri maimai/mizusumashi kemushi SHOKUBUTSU u no hana botan shakuyaku kakitsubata yuri (no hana) kohone kiri no hana ho (no hana) bara ibara shirobara nebu (no hana) akashiya (no hana) ajisai aoi hirugao yiigao uri (no hana) himawari pregnant spider snail (different species from tanishi, spring) slug moth tiger moth (lit., "light-taking moth") mosquito larvae water beetle, whirligig caterpillar PLANTS deutzia scabra (perhaps resembles saxifrage?) peony, 35, 39, 116, 249 peony (a different species) iris(es) lily (blossom(s)) [yellow] water lily/lilies paulownia flower(s) magnolia (blossom(s)), 35 rose(s), 28 wild rose(s) white rose(s) mimosa (blossom(s)) acacia (blossom(s)), 245 hydrangea hollyhock bindweed, convolvulus (lit., "noonface") moonflower, bottle gourd (sometimes also translated as convolvulus; lit., "evening-face") melon (blossom(s)) sunflower

290 276 Reference Section nindo hasu no hana/fuyo keshi (no hana) beni (no hana) mo no hana sarusuberi hyakunichiso wakaba banryoku ki no shita hayanagi shigeri kuwa no ha aoi kusa kusa ikire natsugusa ukikusa take (no ko) takebayashi wasuregusa mugi (no ho) mame honeysuckle lotus flower poppy (flower(s)) safflower duckweed flower crepe myrtle zinnia(s) young leaves, 103 myriad green leaves under the trees leafy willow trees luxuriance (of foliage) mulberry leaves green grass, 34 sultry grass, rank grass summer grass, 22, 120 floating grass bamboo (shoots) bamboo grove, stand of bamboo day lily (lit., "forgetting plant") barley (ears) beans AKI JIKO zansho asasamu aki (no) hi aki harete aki no kure AUTUMN (August, September, October) SEASON, CLIMATE lingering [summer] heat morning chill, morning cold autumn day, 37, 108 autumn clear, 24 autumn dusk, autumn's close, 9,132, 133,186

291 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: AUTUMN 277 aki no yo nagaki yo yosamu hazuki TENMON ama-no-gawa mikazuki hoshizukiyo matsuyoi tsuki kyo no tsuki tsukiyo yuzuki meigetsu tsukimi kiri kawagiri yogiri asagiri tsuyu asatsuyu shiratsuyu aki (no) kaze nowaki taifu CHIRI irozuku autumn night, 17 long night night chill, cold night, 14 leaf month, month of leaves ASTRONOMY River of Heaven, Milky Way, 29 crescent moon (lit., "three-day moon"), 37 starry night (lit., "stars & moon night") waiting [for the moon] evening moon, 30, 43, 61, 196 today's moon (i.e., tonight's) moon [lit] night evening moon bright moon, harvest moon, 121 moon-viewing, 11 fog, mist (distinguish kasumi, in spring) river fog night fog, 258 morning fog dew morning dew, 19, 258 white dew autumn wind, 128, 182 [autumn] storm (lit., "field-divider") typhoon, 44 GEOGRAPHY take color, color up (of fruits, tree leaves)

292 278 Reference Section hanano karita otoshimizu shiranui GYOJI aki matsuri tama matsuri tamadana tanabata negai no ito kaji no ha (bon) odori toro haka mairi hanabi SEIKATSU inekari hasa/inakake kakashi takegari kinuta mushiko shilshi DOBUTSU shika kari wataru tsuru kitaru mozu uzura flower 661(1(8), 256 reaped field(s), harvested field(s) drawn water (from the fields) phosphorescent light (lit., "unknown light") OBSERVANCES autumn festival, 45 feast of all souls spirit-shelf (an altar in the home) Tanabata, Festival of the Weaver prayer threads mulberry leaf (used in ritual) (Bon [Festival]) dance lantern grave-visit fireworks (lit., "flower-fire"), 25 LIVELIHOOD, LIFE rice-cutting rice rack, 45 scarecrow mushroom-gathering fulling block, 126 insect cage autumn loneliness, 45 ANIMALS deer geese migrate, 124 cranes/storks come shrike, butcher bird quail

293 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: AUTUMN 279 hiyo(dori) kitsutsuki wataridori shigi hiwa kotori sake akiaji ayu ochiru tonbo akatonbo tonbotsuri toro higurashi kirigirisu inago kdrogi/itodo kajika kagero minomushi jimushi mushi no naku aki no koe bulbul woodpecker bird of passage, migratory bird snipe, longbill, 186 siskin little birds salmon, 41 autumn mackerel, 43 trout fall, 213 dragonfly, 31 red dragonfly catching dragonflies (with a pole), 25 praying mantis, 38 clear-toned cicada, day-darkener, 36, 109 katydid, 19 grasshopper, locust cricket(s) (two different species) black frog (lit., "river deer") shadflies bagworm (lit., "straw-coat insect") ground beetle, 36 insects cry, 190 voice(s) of autumn (i.e., insect cries), 213 SHOKUBUTSU mukuge hagi asagao ominaeshi fuyo ran PLANTS rose of sharon bush clover, 98 morning glory/glories maiden flower rose mallow orchid

294 280 Reference Section nogiku kiku shiragiku kigiku nadeshiko ashi-no-hana/roka susuki (no ho) susuki no nana tsuta tokibi awa no ho soba momo taburu ringo nashi kaki zakuro budo kuri shii no mi e no mi ko no mi hechima take matsutake basho kusa no hana kusa no me darake momiji/koyo yanagi chiru kiri no ha chiru konoha chiru ochiba wild aster (lit., "field chrysanthemum") chrysanthemum(s), 43,107 white chrysanthemum(s) yellow chrysanthemum(s) pink(s) reed flower(s), reed tassel(s) pampas grass (plume(s)) pampas grass flower(s) vine(s) maize millet ear(s) buckwheat peach munching, 258 apple, 123 pear, 22 persimmon pomegranate grapes chestnuts pasania nuts, 45 hackberry nuts, berries (lit., "seeds of trees") sponge gourd mushrooms, 212 pine mushrooms banana plant flowers of grasses, flowers of weeds lush sprouting grass, 31 autumn leaves (lit., "red leaves") willow [leaves] fall, 12 paulownia leaves fall tree leaves fall, 31,127 fallen leaves

295 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: WINTER 281 FUYU JIKO fuyu no hajime kannazuki fuyu no yo kanya samuki yo samusa/tsumetasa sokobie kan no uchi yuku toshi toshi kurete toshiwasure TENMON kangetsu tsuki samushi fuyu no hoshi fuyu no kumo kanrai hatsushigure shigure shigururu yoshigure shimo hatsushimo shimoyo WINTER (November, December, January*) SEASON, CLIMATE beginning of winter godless month, November winter night, 183 cold night, midwinter night cold night the cold deep cold, 44 middle of the cold departing year the year ends, 121 New Year's Eve party (lit., "yearforgetting") ASTRONOMY cold moon [light], icy moon [light] moon is cold, moon is chill winter stars, 43 winter clouds, 34 mid-winter thunder, 38 first [winter] rain/drizzle [winter] rain/drizzle, 30 it's raining/drizzling [in winter], 18 [winter] night rain/drizzle frost, 197 first frost frosty night *See following section for the New Year.

296 282 Reference Section shimogare hatsuyuki oyuki yuki yuki maroge miyuki yukimi fubuki mizore arare tsurara kogarashi CHIRI kareno ko~ru hatsugori kori todo taki kareru kan no mizu SEIKATSU susuharai sumi no hi umorebi hibachi/hioke kotatsu frost-withered first snow heavy snow snow, 32 snow ball deep snow snow-viewing, 11 snow storm, driving snow, or, snow drift sleet hail icicles withering wind (lit., "tree-witherer"), 18 GEOGRAPHY withered field(s), withered moor to freeze first ice ice frozen ground waterfall dries up icy water, mid-winter water LIVELIHOOD, LIFE cleaning [the family altar] (literally, "soot-brushing"; objects from the altar are placed outdoors during the process) charcoal fire banked fire brazier kotatsu (no Western equivalent; it is a

297 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: WINTER 283 sumi fuyugomori mofu kamiko nunoko setta daikonhiki mugimaki ajiro takagari furugoyomi takuan DOBUTSU kuma washi chidori oshidori kamome kamo kogamo/takabe kaitsuburi misosazai mizutori ukinedori kujira kaki namako kogane mushi central fire pit with a frame and quilt over it; one can sit with the lower body under the quilt, and make a table or desk of the top) charcoal winter's bonds, winter seclusion, 98 blanket, 248 top coat (thin; made of treated paper) quilted cotton clothes snow sandals, 197 radish-pulling sowing barley wicker-work [fish trap] falconry old calendar pickled radish ANIMALS bear, 41 eagle plover(s), 183 mandarin duck gull wild duck(s) small duck, or, duckling grebe wren, jenny wren water fowl birds floating asleep whale oyster sea slugs gold bug

298 284 Reference Section SHOKUBUTSU kttsu m ki kangiku karegiku daikon akakabura negi uragare karesusuki chiru susuki kare ashi matsu suisen SHINNEN shinnen ganjitsu gancho Oashita hatsuhi shogatsu... no toshi PLANTS camphor tree winter chrysanthemum withered chrysanthemum [Japanese long, white] radish red turnip onion, 26 desolate, withered (lit., "withered twigs") withered pampas grass falling pampas grass fluffs withered reeds pine [tree] daffodils, narcissus THE NEW YEAR* the New Year New Year's Day New Year's morning great morning New Year's [Day] sun [rise] original, perfect month Year of the... (ne, Rat; ushi, Ox; tora, Tiger; u, Hare; tatsu, Dragon; mi, Serpent; uma, Horse; hitsuji, Sheep; saru, Monkey; tori, Rooster; inu, Dog; (w)i, Boar one of the twelve signs of the Chinese Zodiac) Formerly same as the "Chinese New Year", early February, and associated with the coming of spring. Now celebrated during the first week of January. All of the objects named are associated with family or public celebrations.

299 SEASON-WORD LIST AND INDEX: NEW YEAR 285 kozo/kyonen kotoshi tarotsuki hatsuashita hatsu hi no de hatsuzora horai shimadai wakaebisu kadomatsu matsukazari matsutatte mochi shida wakana kushigaki kashiguri kaya no tane kuromame iwashi kazu no ko mochibana koji oibane/hanetsuki last year this year Taro Month (January; old custom had all persons become one year older on New Year's Day; Taro is the most common male given name) first morning first sunrise first sky Islands of Eternal Youth (equivalent of the Elysian Fields; a model used as decoration) island stand (for above) Young Ebisu (god of wealth and commerce) gate-pines (decorations) pine decorations putting up the pines, decorating with pines rice cakes (offered on shimadcii, as are the other foods, below) fern (used to decorate mochi) young greens, young herbs dried persimmon dried chestnut pine seeds black beans sardine herring roe rice-cake flowers orange battledore and shuttlecock (traditional New Year's game for girls; forerunner of badminton)

300 286 Reference Section tako temari wakamizu fude no hajime kakizome zo~ni hatsu shibai hatsuni hatsuyume manzai hatsu kasumi jinjitsu dondo kite (traditional toy for boys at New Year) hand ball (used in New Year's games), 39 young water beginning with the brush, first writing first calligraphy soup with rice cakes (for New Year's breakfast) first theater [-going] first freight, first load (boats and draft animals decorated for the occasion) first dream comic [street] dancers first mist [of New Year, of spring] people day (seventh of January; last day of the week-long celebration) bonfire (made by children to burn New Year's decorations, the morning of the fifteenth)

301 Glossary This glossary contains the Japanese technical terms used in this handbook and a few more which the reader may encounter in other books on haiku and related subjects. For some of these words the index will lead to further information. A relatively literal translation of each Japanese word follows it in parentheses. All definitions supply the meaning of the word as used in Japanese; only in a few cases has a specifically Western sense been indicated. These Japanese words are all their own plurals, and where they name a poetic genre or form the same word is used for the generic (for example, "The sonnet came to England from Italy.") and the specific ("This sonnet by Shakespeare mocks the tradition."). All words defined in the glossary have been italicized throughout the glossary, though they appear in italics in the text of the handbook only on first occurrence. ageku (completing verse) Of renga, the final stanza. aware (touchingness) Moving, stirring; the kind of thing that evokes an emotional response; often in the phrase mono no aware, "the touchingness of things". 287

302 288 Reference Section chiri (geography) In the season-word list, a category including natural phenomena on land and water (hills, streams, etc.) choka, or nagauta (long poem) Traditional verse form, usually spoken of as having alternating verse-lines of five and seven onji, plus one of seven onji at the end. An alternate interpretation suggests verse-lines of twelve onji, with a caesura dividing each line into five and seven, plus a concluding line of seven onji. The genre flourished in the era of the ManyOshU, and has had an occasional revival. See jiamari. dai (topic) Originally, the circumstances under which a poem was written, given in a short preface; later, a set topic upon which a poem was composed. daisan (the third) Of renga, the third stanza. dcbutsu (animals) In the season-word list, a category including animals, especially birds and insects. dodoitsu (city leisure / quickly city-to-city) One traditional form for popular and folk songs, in seven-seven-seven-hve onji. The name appears to derive from the speed with which songs in this form became popular. See ji-amari. gunsaku (group work) Of haiku and tanka, a group of poems on a single subject which illuminate the subject from various points of view, but can be read independently. See rensaku. gyoji (observances) In the season-word list, a category including festivals, holidays, and associated objects. haibun (haikai prose) Prose in terse style by a haikai or haiku poet, usually including hokku or haiku. haiga (haikai painting) A painting in a slightly abstract, rough style, including a haiku or hokku in calligraphy. haigon (haikai word) Words normally excluded from "seri-

303 GLOSSARY 289 ous" poems (for example, words from foreign languages, words too vulgar in meaning or diction, etc.), but which became a distinguishing feature of haikai, haiku, senrytt, etc. haijin (haikai or haiku person) Haikai or haiku poet. haikai (humor, joke) Originally, a classification of humorous poems; later, an abbreviation for haikai-no-renga, and thus a generic term for all compositions relating to it, such as haiku, maekuzuke, haibun, etc. Occasionally in Japanese, and especially in French and Spanish, a synonym for haiku. haikai-no-renga (humorous renga) Originally, vulgar, earthy renga, also called mushin renga; by Basho's day the dominant kind of renga. haiku (verse of haikai) Originally (and rarely used), any stanza of a haikai-no-renga; since Shiki, the hokku of haikaino-renga considered as an independent genre. Traditionally, a haiku meets the criteria for hokku containing a kigo (season word) and kireji (cutting word), and being in more or less nve-seven-five onji. Basho emphasized the depth of content and the sincerity of the poet as perceived in the poem, and was not overly concerned with kigo and kireji, though he used both and did promote kisetsu (seasonal aspect) in poetry; several of his poems have ji-amari. Some modern haiku poets have abandoned traditional form, kigo, and kireji, holding that haiku has a deeper essence based on our response to the objects and events of our lives. Haiku is now the most common word for writing of this genre in the West, whether referring to poems in Japanese or any of the Western adaptations. hibiki (echo) In haikai-no-renga, a relationship between two stanzas whose images seem strong in the same way. hiraku (ordinary verse) In renga, any stanza other than the hokku, wakiku, daisan, or ageku.

304 290 Reference Section hokku (starting verse) Originally, in renga, the first stanza, which later became an independent poem, now usually called haiku in Japan, with hokku reverting to its original meaning. For a time hokku was the most common word in English for what we now call haiku. See haiku. hosomi (slenderness) In haikai-no-renga and haiku, empathy, sometimes bordering on the pathetic fallacy. hyakuin (hundred verses) A renga of one hundred stanzas, the most popular length before Basho's day. ichigyoshi (one-column poem) Equivalent to "one-line poem" in English; a pejorative term used by traditional haiku poets when referring to modern haiku in irregular form. (Note: quite different from traditional form with jiamari.) ji (ground) In renga, term for a relatively unimpressive stanza that serves as a background to those more impressive (mon). ji-amari (character excess) In traditional verse forms, the use of one or a few more onji than typical of the form; a fairly common practice. jiko (season, climate) In the season-word list, a category including climatic and certain seasonal phenomena, such as "spring day", "lingering heat" (in autumn), etc. jinji (human affairs) In the season-word list, an alternate category used in some modern references, which includes both gyoji and seikatsu. kaishi (pocket paper) Paper sheets used for writing poems, especially renga. kanshi (Chinese poem) Poem in classical Chinese by a Japanese. kaori (scent, fragrance) In haikai-no-renga, a relationship between two stanzas in which they both evoke the same emotion using different images.

305 GLOSSARY 291 karumi (lightness) In haikai and haiku, the beauty of ordinary things. kasen (poetic genius) Originally, one of the thirty-six great poets of antiquity; hence, a renga of thirty-six stanzas, the length preferred by Basho. katauta (side poem) A traditional verse form of the ManyOsha era, typically in five-seven-seven onji. See sedoka. kidai (seasonal topic) In tanka and haiku, a topic upon which a verse is to be composed. It can be a specific kigo or some seasonal event, or a combination. See kisetsu. kisetsu (season, seasonal aspect) The seasons. The seasonal aspect of the vocabulary (kigo) and subject matter (kidai) of traditional tanka, renga, and haiku; a deep feeling for the passage of time, as known through the objects and events of the seasonal cycle. (See aware.) kigo (season word) The name of a plant, animal, climatic condition, or other object or activity traditionally connected with a particular season in Japanese poetry. kireji (cutting word) In hokku and haiku, a word or suffix that indicates a pause and usually comes at one of the formal divisions or at the end. A kireji may be used within the second rhythmical unit, breaking the poem into a five-threefour-hve rhythm, for example. The two types are verb and adjective suffixes that can end a clause, and short words that mark emphasis, a sort of spoken punctuation. Some common kireji: ka emphasis; at the end of a phrase, makes a question. kana emphasis; usually at the end of a poem, indicates an author's wonder at the object, scene, or event. -keri verb suffix, (past) perfect tense, exclamatory.

306 292 Reference Section -ramu or -ran verb suffix indicating probability, such as "it may be that..." -shi adjective suffix; used to end a clause, it corresponds to an English predicate adjective, as in mine takashi, "the peak is high". -tsu verb suffix, (present) perfect tense. yfl emphasis; has the grammatical effect of a semicolon, separating two independent clauses (not necessarily grammatically complete); gives a sense of suspension, like an ellipsis. kouta (little song)- Popular songs, often in dodoitsu form. kyoka (mad poem) Comic poem in tanka form, often bawdy. maeku (previous verse) In renga, tsukeai, and maekuzuke, the preceding stanza, to which another must be added; the first of a pair of stanzas. maekuzuke (joining to a previous verse) A game based on renga, in which one party gives a stanza (maeku) to which another adds a linking stanza (tsukeku); a linked pair resulting from the game, a forerunner of senrytt. mon (pattern) In renga, a relatively impressive stanza that stands out against the "ground" stanzas. See ji. mono no aware (the touchingness of things) See aware. mushin (without heart) Of renga, frivolous, that is, unconcerned with the classical ideal of beauty in appropriate subject matter and diction, but featuring humor and unconventional language. (Other meanings in other contexts.) See ushin. nagauta (long poem) See choka. nioi (scent, smell) See kaori. on (sound) In poetry, the smallest metrical unit, represented by a single written phonetic character. Abbreviation for onji. onji (sound symbol) A character in the Japanese phonetic

307 GLOSSARY 293 syllabary; hence, a technical term for the smallest metrical unit in Japanese poetry equivalent to mora in Latin prosody (not simply "a syllable", as it is usually translated). renga (linked poem) A poem of alternating stanzas of nominally five-seven-five and seven-seven onji, usually composed by two or more poets, and developing texture by shifting among several traditional topics without narrative progression. Typical renga run to 36, 50,100,1000 or more stanzas. rensaku (linked work) Of haiku and tanka sequences, a longer work composed of individual haiku or tanka which function as stanzas of the whole, and are not independent. See gunsaku. renso (linked ideas) In renga and haiku, the association of images from one stanza to another, or within a verse. renku (linked verse) Originally, linked verse in Chinese; now a modern term for renga, especially the haikai-no-renga of Basho and later poets. sabi (patina/loneliness) Beauty with a sense of loneliness in time, akin to, but deeper than, nostalgia. sedoka (repeat head poem) A traditional verse form with metrically identical stanzas, usually katauta, found mainly in the ManyOshU. Sometimes composed as question and answer by two parties, and so a forerunner of renga. seikatsu (livelihood, life) In the season-word list, a category including human activity, such as farming, working, playing. senryu (river willow) A humorous or satiric poem dealing with human affairs, usually written in the same form as haiku. Derived from the name of a popular selector of maekuzuke. shibumi (astringency) The beauty of subdued, rather than vibrant, images; Classical, rather than Romantic, in taste.

308 294 Reference Section shikishi (square paper) A square sheet of heavy paper for writing and painting, often used for a short poem. shinku (close verse) In renga, a close relationship between two succeeding stanzas. See soku. shiori (bending, withering) In haikai and haiku, sympathy mixed with ambiguity; used of verses with delicate, almost pathetic images. shofu (abbreviation for "Basho style") In haikai and haiku, in the refined style of Basho, rather than the coarser, earlier styles. shokubutsu (plants) In the season-word list, a category including plants, flowers, trees, fruits, etc. soku (distant verse) In renga, a distant relationship between two succeeding stanzas. See shinku. sono mama (as it is) In haikai and haiku, presenting a thing or event just as it is, without flourishes or emotionalism. tanka (short poem) A lyric poem with the typical form fiveseven-five-seven-seven onji (see ji-amari). In many ways equivalent to the sonnet in the West, the tanka was the primary genre of Japanese poetry from ManyOshU times through about the fourteenth century, and still flourishes. Now also called zvaka or uta. tanrenga (short linked poem) A modern term for ancient tanka composed by two authors, formerly called renga, to distinguish them from the longer renga of later times. tanzaku (tanka sheet) A narrow strip of paper on which a tanka or haiku may be written. tenmon (astronomy) In the season-word list, a category including sky phenomena, precipitation, etc. tsukeai (joining together) In renga, the linking of one stanza to another; hence, a pair of linked stanzas.

309 GLOSSARY 295 tsukeku (joined verse) In renga, tsukeai, and maekuzuke, the second of a pair of linked stanzas. ukiyo (floating world) Originally, a Buddhist term indicating the ephemeral nature of life; later, a name for the entertainment quarters of large cities. ushin (with heart) Of renga, sincere, that is, concerned with the classical ideal of beauty, employing only classical diction, etc. See mushin. uta, or -ka or -ga in compounds (song, poem) Generic term for traditional poetry in Japanese, excluding all forms of foreign verse; now uta is practically synonymous with tanka. uta-awase (poem competition) In the tradition of the old Japanese court, the pretext for a party, at which participants composed tanka on assigned dai. Results were judged, and usually prizes given. Mushin renga began as a sort of game for the participants, once the serious business of composing and judging tanka was done. utsuri (reflection) In renga, a relationship between stanzas in Which there is a sense of movement or transference between them; there may also be some visual harmony between the images. wabi (loneliness, poverty) Beauty with a sense of asceticism; austere beauty. waka (Japanese poem) Traditional poetry in Japanese language and style, particularly those varieties found in the ManyOshtt. Today, virtually synonymous with tanka. wakiku (side verse) In renga, the second stanza. yfigen (mystery) Elegance, mystery, depth. (Several whole volumes in Japanese are devoted to this word, particularly in relation to the no drama.)

310 Resources This section does not list every work consulted in writing the handbook, but includes books and other resources which will help anyone wishing to look more deeply into the haiku and other genres, and Japanese culture generally. I have not mentioned works in Japanese; those interested should consult the catalogue of a good East Asian library. Anyone wishing to offer or request further information may write to me, William J. Higginson, c/o From Here Press, Box 219, Fanwood, NJ USA. (Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.) This listing follows, roughly, the plan of the book. After General Works on Japanese Literature and Culture, works dealing specifically with haiku Japanese or international appear under logical subheadings in Resources for Parts One and Two, Haiku, ending with "Directories, Bibliographies, and Organizations". Next come Resources for Part Three, Teaching Haiku. I have listed Resources for Part Four, Before and Beyond Haiku, genreby-genre. The final chapter has a section for itself, Resources for Chapter 16, The Uses of Haiku, which presents a few works that have helped me to understand the relationship between haiku and various aspects of Japanese and Western culture. 296

311 RESOURCES 297 GENERAL WORKS ON JAPANESE LITERATURE AND CULTURE Bownas, Geoffrey, and Anthony Thwaite, editors and translators. The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse. Baltimore: Penguin, A valuable collection, recently surpassed in size, scope, and depth by Sato and Watson, below. Keene, Donald, editor. Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, All of Professor Keene's books on Japanese literature have fine material on haiku and related genres. Keene, Donald, editor. Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology. New York: Grove Press, Keene, Donald. World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Kwock, C. H and Vincent McHugh, translators. Old Friend From Far Away: 150 Chinese Poems from the Great Dynasties. San Francisco: North Point Press, Classical Chinese poetry has been very important to Japanese poets. These are the only translations I know of in English that read as concisely and clearly as the originals. Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, translators. The ManyOsM: One Thousand Poems. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, Sansom, G. B. Japan: A Short Cultural History, Revised Editidh. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Sato, Hiroaki, and Burton Watson, editors and translators. From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, Excellent end matter provided by Thomas Rimer increases the value of this well-done collection. A nicely bound edition on good paper is available from the University of Washington Press, Seattle, and worth the expense. Shiffert, Edith Marcombe, and Yuki Sawa, editors and translators. Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Small sections on modern tanka and haiku. Tsunoda, Ryusaku, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, editors. Sources of Japanese Tradition. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, Among other delights, contains Keene's essay "The Haiku and the Democracy of Poetry in Japan".

312 298 Reference Section Ueda, Makoto. Literary and Art Theories in Japan. Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve Univ., Especially valuable essays on Tsurayuki (tanka poet), Yoshimoto (early renga poet), and Basho (haikai and haiku). RESOURCES FOR PARTS ONE AND TWO, HAIKU Japanese Haiku: Anthologies and Critical Works in English Blyth, R. H. Haiku. Four volumes. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, Several hundred traditional haiku with Blyth's Zen-biased commentary. First volume has considerable background; others organized seasonally. Blyth, R. H. A History of Haiku. Two volumes. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, Includes many modern haiku, despite Blyth's evident lack of sympathy for them. Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Basho to Shiki. Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, A modest selection, most decently translated, with superfluous titles and a little background. Higginson, William J., translator, thistle brilliant morning. Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, Twenty-eight modern haiku. Miyamori, Asataro, translator. An Anthology of Haiku, Ancient and Modern. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, First published in Tokyo, Almost 1000 haiku; the latter 350 are by Shiki and later poets. All with superfluous, made-up titles and explanatory comments where needed, plus a 100-page introduction. Includes Western-language translations by others up to that time. Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, translators. Haikai and Haiku. Tokyo: N.G.S., A selection of haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki, and a few other poets (no moderns after Shiki), plus examples of a haikaino-renga, haibun, and one of Buson's mixed works, with notes and season-word index. Shikitani, Gerry, editor, and David Aylward, editor and translator. Paper Doors: An Anthology of Japanese-Canadian Poetry. Toronto: Coach

313 RESOURCES 299 House Press, Haiku and tanka in Japanese, with translations, plus original modern poems in English, by thirteen very fine poets. Ueda, Makoto, editor and translator. Modern Japanese Haiku: An Anthology. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, A good selection of work by twenty important poets, beginning with Shiki and ending with a few of today's major figures..yasuda, Kenneth. The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Valuable for the many excerpts from classical and modern critical writing on haiku in Japanese. Also has some of Yasuda's own haiku in English, from A Pepper Pod (see below). Japanese Haiku: Individual Authors in English Translation Beichman, Janine. Masaoka Shiki. Boston: Twayne, A good brief biography, stressing the breadth of Shiki's work, especially in tanka and prose. Translation quality varies. Furuta, Soichi, translator. Cape Jasmine and Pomegranates: The Free-Meter Haiku of Ippekiro. A Mushinsha Book. New York: Grossman, Over three hundred poems with translations. Furuta, Soichi, author and translator, a man never becoming a line Yonkers, NY: Edition Heliodor, Twelve haiku by Furuta, in his own English translations, written to photographs by Frank Dituri. A limited edition has the original Japanese. Isaacson, Harold J., editor and translator. Peonies Kana: Haiku by the Upasaka Shiki. New York: Theater Arts Books, Over 300 of Shiki's haiku in semi-english. Mackenzie, Lewis, translator. The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa. London: John Murray, Over 300 haiku, with transliterated Japanese. Sawa, Yuki, and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, translators. Haiku Master Buson. South San Francisco: Heian International, A wide range of materials; book poorly produced. Stevens, John, translator. Mountain Tasting: Zen Haiku by Santoka Taneda. New York: Weatherhill, A short introduction followed by over 350 poems.

314 300 Reference Section Ueda, Makoto. Matsuo BashO. New York: Twayne, An overview of Basho's life, hokku, haibun, renga, and critical writings. Now available in paperback from Kodansha. English-Language Haiku: Anthologies and Critical Works Amann, Eric W. The Wordless Poem: A Study of Zen in Haiku, revised edition. Toronto: Haiku Society of Canada, Examples by Japanese and English-language poets. Duhaime, Andre, and Dorothy Howard, editors and translators. Haiku: anthologie canadienne / Canadian Anthology. Hull, Quebec: Editions Asticou, in press. A large anthology of work by Canadian poets writing in English, French, and Japanese, all bilingual English and French. Higginson, William J. Itadakimasu: Essays on Haiku and Senryu in English. Kanona, NY: J & C Transcripts, Horovitz, Michael, editor. Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain. Baltimore: Penguin Books, A few haiku each by Chris Torrance and William Wyatt, as well as many other fine poems. Lamb, Elizabeth Searle. Haiku in English, : A History, with a Checklist of Publications by Lamb and William J. Higginson. Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes, in preparation. Swede, George, editor. Canadian Haiku Anthology. Toronto: Three Trees Press, van den Heuvel, Cor, editor. The Haiku Anthology: English Language Haiku by Contemporary American and Canadian Poets. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, Outstanding. English-Language Haiku: Individual Authors Every poet writing haiku in English who is represented in this handbook and has at least one book of haiku that I know of is listed here. These books are not necessarily the sources of the poems quoted in the text. This section supplements the roll call of the haiku magazines in Chapter 5, The Haiku Movement in English, for most of these collections came from the so-called

315 RESOURCES 301 "small presses" that, with the "little magazines", keep all literature alive. An asterisk (*) after a title indicates that it is not primarily a book of haiku, though it contains some. Amann, Eric. Cicada Voices: Selected Haiku of Eric Amann George Swede, Editor. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, Bostok, Janice. On Sparse Brush* Brisbane, Australia: Makar Press, Brooks, Randy. Barbwire Holds Its Ground. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, Davidson, L. A. The Shape of the Tree. Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes, [Drevniok, Betty, writing as] Makato. Inland: Three Rivers From An Ocean. Ottawa: Commoners' Publishing Society, Dudley, Michael, through the green fuse. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, Faiers, Chris. Sleeping in Ruins: Haiku and Senryu Toronto: Unfinished Monument Press, Ginsberg, Allen. Mostly Sitting Haiku. Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, Gorman, LeRoy. Heart's Garden. Montreal: Guernica Editions, Harr, Lorraine Ellis. A Flight of Herons, Seascapes & Seasons In Haiku. Portland, OR: Dragonfly, Harter, Penny. In the Broken Curve. Sherbrooke, Quebec: Burnt Lake Press, Hayden, Robert. Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems.* New York: Liveright, Higginson, William J. Paterson Pieces: Poems * Fanwood, NJ: Old Plate Press, Hotham, Gary. Without the Mountains: Haiku & Senryu. [Laurel, MD]: Yiqralo Press, Hoyt, Clement. Storm of Stars: The Collected Poems and Essays* Baton Rouge, LA: The Green World, Jewell, Foster. Sand Waves. El Rito, NM: Sangre de Cristo Press, Kenny, Adele. Notes from the Nursing Home. Fanwood, NJ: From Here Press, Kerouac, Jack. Scattered Poems.* San Francisco: City Lights, 1971.

316 302 Reference Section Knight, Etheridge. Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems.* Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Lamb, Elizabeth Searle. in this blaze of sun. Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, Lester, Julius. Who I Am: Poems.* New York: Dial Press, Lloyd, David. The Circle: A Haiku Sequence with Illustrations. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, Lowell, Amy. Pictures of the Floating World.* New York: Macmillan, Lyles, Peggy Willis. Still at the Edge. Oneonta, NY: Swamp Press, McClintock, Michael. Maya: Poems * Los Angeles: Seer Ox, Mosolino, William R. Fifty Haiku. [Self-published], Pauly, Bill. Wind the Clock by Bittersweet. W. Lafayette, IN: High/Coo, Pizzarelli, Alan. Zenrya and other works Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, Pound, Ezra. Personae: Collected Shorter Poems.* New York: New Directions, Pratt, Claire. Haiku. [Self-published], Reznikoff, Charles. Poems : Volume I of the Complete Poems* Edited by Seamus Cooney. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1976.,Richardson, Marion Jane. Kicking the Dust. [Self-published], Roseliep, Raymond. Listen to Light: Haiku. Ithaca, NY: Alembic Press, Rotella, Alexis Kaye. Clouds in My Teacup. Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes, Saunders, Margaret. Snapdragons! Haiku & Senryu. London, Ontario: South Western Ontario Poetry, Shea, Martin, across the loud stream. Los Angeles: Seer Ox, Snyder, Gary. Earth House Hold: Technical Notes & Queries To Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries.* New York: New Directions, Southard, O [also known as "Mabelsson Norway"]. Marsh-grasses and other verses. Platteville, WI: American Haiku, 1967.

317 RESOURCES 303 Spiess, Robert. The Shape of Water. Madison, WI: Modern Haiku, Stefanile, Selma. The Poem Beyond My Reach.* West Lafayette, IN: Sparrow Press, Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems.* New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Swede, George. All of Her Shadows. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, Tipton, James. Bittersweet. Austin, TX: Cold Mountain Press, van den Heuvel, Cor. dark. New York: Chant Press, Virgil, Anita. A 2nd Flake. Montclair, NJ: self-published, Virgilio, Nicholas. An Unknown Flower. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, in press. Webb, Joyce W. Return to Lincolnville* Madison, WI: Wells Printing Co., White, Beverly, days of sun nights of moon. No place or date. Williams, Paul O. The Edge of the Woods: 55 Haiku. Elsah, IL: self-published, Williams, William Carlos. The Collected Earlier Poems.* New York: New Directions, Willmot, Rodney Wilson. Haiku. Quebec: Editions Particulieres, Wills, John. River. Statesboro, GA: self-published, Wills, Marlene Morelock. the old tin roof. No place, Wright, Ellen, and Michel Fabre, editors. Richard Wright Reader.* New York: Harper & Row, Wyatt, William E. Songs of the Four Seasons. Sutton, Surrey, UK: Origins- Diversions Publications, Yarrow, Ruth, no one sees the stems. Battle Ground, IN: High/Coo, Yasuda, Kenneth. A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems Together with Original Haiku. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Reprinted as A Pepper-Pod: A Haiku Sampler. Tokyo and Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Young, Virginia Brady. Shedding the Water. No place, Haiku in Languages Other Than Japanese and English My source for the early French haikai is William Leonard Schwartz's The Imaginative Interpretation of the Far East in Modern

318 304 Reference Section French Literature , published at Paris, by Librarie Ancienne Honore Champion, Works not found in the magazines mentioned in Chapter 6, Haiku Around the World, came mainly from the following books. I have listed a bilingual edition where known to me. An asterisk (*) indicates not primarily a book of haiku. Bodmershof, Imma. Lo'wenzahn: Die auf 17 Silben verkilrzten Haiku. Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan: Itadori Hakkosho, Domenchina, Juan Jose. Poesfas Completas ( ).* Madrid: Signo, Duhaime, Andre, halkus d'ici. Hull, Quebec: Editions Asticou, Eluard, Paul. Premiers Poimes * Lausanne, Switzerland: Mermod, Hammarskjold, Dag. VUgmdrken.*'Stockholm, Sweden: Albert Bonniers Forlag, (Translated by Leif SjGberg and W. H. Auden as Markings, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.) Hellemans, Karel. De Heuvels Rondom: Haikoes en Senrioes. No place, Jappe, Hajo. Haiku. 5. Folge. No place or date. Machado, Antonio. Poesfas Completas* Septima Edicidn. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, The Dream Below the Sun: Selected Poems,* translated by Willis Barnstone, contains some of the haiku-influenced work, and is bilingual. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, Munoz, Maria Luisa. Miniaturas. Wilton, CT: self-published, Nunez, Ana Rosa. Escamas del Caribe (Haikus de Cuba). Miami: Ediciones Universal, Paz, Octavio. Early Poems * Translated by Muriel Rukeyser, et al. New York: New Directions, 1973 [bilingual]. Reumer, Wanda, and Piet Zandboer. Samen Oud Worden. No place or date. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Sttmtliche Werke.* Zweiter Band. Wiesbaden: Insel- Verlag, Seferis, George. Collected Poems * Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967 [bilingual].

319 RESOURCES 305 Tablada, Jose Juan. Obras: I Poesfa.* Mexico: Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Uchida, Sono. Haiku: le poime le plus court du monde. Rabat, Morocco: Editions Techniques Nord-Africaines, This essay on the haiku follows a preface by Leopold Sedar Senghor. Briefly introduces the haiku; a few poems each by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Chiyo, followed by a couple of poems from each of twenty-five modern Japanese haiku poets, with comments. Talks of world-wide haiku, and concludes with examples from Senegal and Morocco, where Uchida has served as Ambassador from Japan, and instituted haiku contests. Directories, Bibliographies, Organizations Brooks, Randy, and Shirley Brooks, editors. Haiku Review '80, Haiku Review '82, and Haiku Review '84. Published by High/Coo, Route 1, Battle Ground, IN A series of biennial pamphlets detailing the publishing activities in English-language haiku during the previous two years. Brower, Gary L., with David William Foster. Haiku in Western Languages: An Annotated Bibliography (With Some Reference to Senryu). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, The index is somewhat helpful; otherwise, confusing and inaccurate. Fulton, Len, and Ellen Ferber, editors. The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses. Revised annually. Published by Dustbooks, P.O. Box 100, Paradise, CA USA. Best source for current English-language literary magazine and book publishers. See "haiku" in index. Fulton, Len, and Ellen Ferber, editors. Small Press Record of Books in Print. Revised annually. Published by Dustbooks, address above. Best source for authors and titles of books published by small presses; includes ordering information. See "haiku" in subject index. Japan P. E. N. Club. Japanese Literature in European Languages. No place, Japan P. E. N. Club, Much has happened since, but still valuable for thoroughness; titles presented in characters as well as transliteration, etc. Lists books and articles in literary, academic, and popular journals.

320 306 Reference Section Rimer, J. Thomas, and Robert E. Morrel, editors. Guide to Japanese Poetry. Bonnie R. Crown, general editor, Asian Literature Bibliography Series. Boston: G. K. Hall, in press. Annotated bibliography of translations from Japanese into English and critical works. The following organizations exist to help haiku poets and those interested in haiku. The Museum of Haiku Literature, in Japan, has recently been established to serve as a national archive, and is interested in overseas materials as well. Each of the other groups is a nationwide organization (international, in the case of the HSA) of poets, readers, and teachers of haiku. Each offers helpful information to newcomers to haiku study and composition, and can help in obtaining poets for readings, instruction, or contest judging. Some maintain libraries or keep up bibliographies. These organizations do not usually have paid staff, so be patient if you enter into correspondence with them. In Japan: International Division, Museum of Haiku Literature , Hyakunin-Cho, Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo 160. In The United States: Haiku Society of America, Inc. c/o Japan Society, 333 East 47th St., New York, NY In Canada: Haiku Society of Canada, c/o Sandra Fuhringer, 70 Taymall St., Hamilton, Ontario L8W 2A1. In Belgium: Haikoe Centrum Vlaanderen. Drogenberg 100, 1900 Overijse. In Holland: Haiku Kring Nederland. Buiskendael 11, 3743 EA Baarn. RESOURCES FOR PART THREE, TEACHING HAIKU Includes the sources for the examples cited at the beginning of Chapter 11, Haiku for Kids, plus a few other useful books. See also such books as The Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel, and others mentioned in Resources for Parts One and Two.

321 RESOURCES 307 Henderson, Harold G. Haiku in English. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, First published as a Japan Society (NY) pamphlet in 1965, previously this was the only work on the teaching of haiku in English. A bit off the mark in places, but Henderson's review of Japanese haiku characteristics at the beginning is still helpful. Kusano Shimpei. frogs &. others. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, translators. A Mushinsha Book. New York: Grossman, Modern Japanese free-verse in excellent translations. Lewis, Richard, editor; Haruna Kimura, translator. There Are Two Lives: Poems by Children of Japan. New York: Simon & Schuster, Freeverse poems by children ages 6 to 11, so good I use them in professional adult writing workshops. Philippi, Donald, translator. This Wine of Peace, This Wine of Laughter: A Complete Anthology of Japan's Earliest Songs. A Mushinsha Book. New York: Grossman, Poems, mainly choka and tanka, that the ManyOshu missed. Excellent. Sackheim, Eric, editor and translator. The Silent Firefly: Japanese Songs of Love and Other Things. Tokyo: Kodansha International, Folk songs, mostly in dodoitsu form, collected in the early twentieth century. Excellent. Zavatsky, Bill, and Ron Padgett, editors. The Whole Word Catalogue 2. New York: Teachers & Writers/McGraw-Hill, Writing ideas, plus in-depth articles on everything from keeping journals in first grade to following up on high school graduates, writing genre fiction, making media of all sorts, etc. Parts of Chapter 11 of this handbook first appeared there. Good idea: Send for the T&W catalogue of books on all aspects of teaching writing. Teachers & Writers, 5 Union Square West, New York, NY RESOURCES FOR PART FOUR, BEFORE AND BEYOND HAIKU Tanka and Kyoka: Translations from Japanese Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner. Japanese Court Poetry. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, The standard work on the courtly tanka, down to the fourteenth century. Dull.

322 308 Reference Section Fujiwara Teika, editor. Superior Poems of Our Time: A Thirteenth-Century Poetic Treatise and Sequence. Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner, translators. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, A major contribution to understanding how an editor built up a sequence of tanka in an anthology, foreshadowing several important characteristics of renga composition. Translations so-so. [Ishikawa] Takuboku. Poems to Eat. Carl Sesar, translator. Tokyo: Kodansha International, Selected tanka, in clear, accurate translations that work as poems in English. Includes Japanese originals. Watch for a reprint. Ishikawa Takuboku. Sad Toys. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, translators. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue Univ. Press, Complete text in Japanese, transliteration, and good translation of Takuboku's last book of tanka. [Kitagawa] Utamaro. A Chorus of Birds. James T. Kenny, translator. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Viking Press, Fifteen wood-block prints of birds by the eighteenth century master; each print depicts two birds, and contains two pseudonymous kyoka. An appendix identifies the birds, and gives transliterations and translations. Miner, Earl. An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry. With translations by the author and Robert H. Brower. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, Based on the first item in this section; much shorter, with a slightly different emphasis on the purposes for which the poems were written. Morris, Ivan. The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Masterful presentation of the society in which the tanka flourished. Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale ofgenji. Edward G. Seidensticker, translator. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, A novel containing some 800 tanka, intimately necessary to the action, as they were to the style of life portrayed. Saigyo. Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems. William R. LaFleur, editor and translator. New York: New Directions, A good selection; translations so-so. Waley, Arthur, editor and translator. Japanese Poetry: The 'Uta'. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919, and later editions. Mostly tanka, from the ManyOsha through the fourteenth century, in transliteration and translations especially helpful to the student of Japanese language.

323 RESOURCES 309 Yosano, Akiko. Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Tsunoda, editors and translators. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue Univ. Studies, Slightly fewer than one-half of the poems from the most important book by the major Romantic poet and feminist, in Japanese, transliteration, and good translation. Tanka: Originals in Western Languages Borges, Jorge Luis. The Gold of the Tigers: Selected Later Poems. Alastair Reid, translator. New York: E. P. Dutton, A bilingual edition, including six interesting tanka. Goldstein, Sanford. Gaijin Aesthetics. LaCrosse, WI: Juniper Press, Goldstein's personal gains from the study of Takuboku and Akiko. McClintock, Michael. Man With No Face. No place: Shelters Press, Best tanka I have seen in the West. Renga: Translations from Japanese Matsuo Basho. Monkey's Raincoat. Maeda Cana, translator. A Mushinsha Book. New York: Grossman, Translations, with notes and transliteration, of four kasen from Sarumino, the best-known anthology of the Basho school. Although Basho was instrumental in the book, it was actually edited by two of his disciples, and contains work by several poets. Translation is sometimes a bit awkward, but repays study. Miner, Earl. Japanese Linked Poetry: An Account with Translations of Renga and Haikai Sequences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, Highly technical history and criticism, with several awkwardly presented translations and transliterated text. Miner, Earl, and Hiroko Odagiri, translators. The Monkey's Straw Raincoat and Other Poetry of the Basho School. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, As in Japanese Linked Poetry, the renga are presented as a succession of tsukeai, making it impossible to get a sense of the movement over a series of verses perhaps the most important single characteristic of a whole renga. Technical discussion and transliteration. Sato, Hiroaki. One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English. New York: Weatherhill, A clear, concise, and enjoyable introduction to the essentials of renga composition. Also presents over a hundred translations and adaptations in English of Basho's famous frog poem,

324 310 Reference Section in chronological order, and Sato's thoughts on translating renga and haiku. Finally, 100 Frogs ends with an anthology of haiku, tsukeai, and renga composed in English by several fine poets. Renga: Originals in Western Languages Kondo, Tadashi, Kris Young, Robert Reed, Philip Meredith, and others. Twelve Tokyo Renga Fanwood, NJ: From Here Press, in press. McClintock, Michael, S. L. Poulter, and Virginia Brady Young. Jesus Leaving Vegas. Milwaukee, WI: Pentagram Press, Seems more like a collaborative haiku sequence, each verse independent. Paz, Octavio, Jacques Roubaud, Edoardo Sanguineti, and Charles Tomlinson. Renga: A Chain of Poems. Charles Tomlinson, translator. New York: George Braziller, A collaborative sonnet sequence in Spanish, French, Italian, and English, with facing English translation. Inspired by Japanese renga, to which it bears little resemblance. Sato, Hiroaki. One Hundred Frogs. See last entry in previous section. Haibun: Translations from Japanese Keene, Dennis, translator. The Modern Japanese Prose Poem: An Anthology of Six Poets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, A broad range of work, showing a mixture of influences from French Surrealist prose poems and traditional Japanese haibun. [Kobayashi] Issa. The Year of My Life: A Translation oflssa's Oraga Ham. Nobuyuki Yuasa, translator. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, Issa's journal for one full year in a wordy translation. [Matsuo] Basho. Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Oku-no-hosomichi. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, translators. A Mushinsha Book. New York: Grossman, The only complete translation of this work into English that gives a sense of Basho's masterful prose style. Includes Japanese text and notes. [Matsuo] Basho. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Nobuyuki Yuasa, translator. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, Includes Oku no hosomichi and four other important journals; translations mediocre. Miner, Earl, editor and translator. Japanese Poetic Diaries. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, Places Basho's Oku no hosomichi and

325 RESOURCES 311 a short journal by Shiki in the long tradition of the Japanese poetic diary. The two other pieces have many tanka. Haibun: Originals in Western Languages Kerouac, Jack. Desolation Angels. New York: Coward-McCann, The first part of this novel is in haibun style. Little, Geraldine Clinton. Separation: Seasons in Space: A Western Haibun. West Lafayette, IN: Sparrow Press, Roth, Hal. Behind the Fireflies. Glen Burnie, MD: Wind Chimes, Spiess, Robert. Five Caribbean Haibun. Madison, WI: Wells Printing Co., Tulloss, Rod. December Paterson, NJ: From Here Press, Senryu: Translations from Japanese Blyth, R. H. Edo Satirical Verse Anthologies. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, A chronological survey of the main eighteenth century anthologies, with Japanese, transliteration, translations, and commentary. Blyth, R. H. Japanese Life and Character in Senryu. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, A history and selection of senryu from its beginnings in the late seventeenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Plus over three hundred pages of poems catalogued under various topics, and a large number of poems categorized by season. Blyth, R. H. Senryu: Japanese Satirical Verses. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, Some fifty pages devoted to a useful comparison of haiku and senryu; a large number of senryu classified by topic. One of the better books for the student of haiku who wishes to expand horizons. Isaacson, Harold J., translator and editor. The Throat of the Peacock: A book of modern senryu on parents and children, with a sutra by the Buddha about filial devotion. New York: Theater Arts Books, An oddity in distressed English. Levy, Howard S., and Junko Ohsawa, translators. One Hundred Senryu. South Pasadena, CA: Langstaff Publications, Short-but-good introduction; original Japanese and good translations. Best short book on the subject. NOTE: Several of the works listed in Resources for Parts One and Two, under "English-Language Haiku", contain senryu as well as haiku, but there are few collections exclusively of senryu in Western languages.

326 312 Reference Section Haiku Sequences I know of no works in Western languages which include a substantial number of haiku sequences translated from Japanese. Many of the haiku books listed in Resources for Parts One and Two contain original sequences in Western languages. RESOURCES FOR CHAPTER 16, THE USES OF HAIKU French, Calvin L. The Poet-Painters: Buson and His Followers. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Museum of Art, This catalogue for an art exhibit contains an excellent chapter on Buson, and translations of the inscriptions on the paintings. One can see in Buson's painting his extraordinary capacity for detail harmonized with his powerful sense of abstraction, both qualities of his haiku as well. Matsumura Goshun ( ) and Ki Batei ( ), two of his disciples in painting, also incorporate Chinese poems and haiku (frequently Buson's) into their works, as do the other painters represented. Several of these works are haiga. (Reproductions in black and white.) Herrigel, Eugene. Zen. R. F. C. Hull, translator. New York: McGraw-Hill, Includes his famous essay, "Zen in the Art of Archery"; anyone wanting to take up any art should read this description of studying under a master. Miner, Earl. The Japanese Tradition in British and American Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, Originally completed before the rise of the "Beat" poets, this work does not deal with anyone past the generation of Pound, Williams, and Amy Lowell. It makes clear how these, and Yeats in his plays, appropriated techniques and concerns from Japanese literature. Okakura Kakuzo. The Book of Tea. Many editions since the first, American, in Illustrates the Romantic notion of Japan's traditional culture held by many, Japanese and Westerners, as the old ways gave way to modernization. Philippi, Donald, L., translator. Kojiki. Tokyo: Univ. of Tokyo Press, The major repository of Japan's earliest mythology; essentially Shinto scripture. Its songs and poems abound in joy akin to the Song of Solomon. Very helpful introduction and back matter.

327 RESOURCES 313 Ross, Nancy Wilson, editor. The World of Zen: An East-West Anthology. New York: Vintage, Along with a number of excellent essays on Zen itself are several on Zen and the arts, including painting, gardens, haiku, tea ceremony, architecture, drama, and humor. Leads to a host of other books on its subject. Tanizaki, Junichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, translators. New Haven: Leete's Island Books, Wonderful essay on the modern world and traditional Japanese culture by a major novelist. Zolbrod, Leon M. Haiku Painting. Tokyo: Kodansha, Many color plates. Follows the development of haiga from the seventeenth century through Basho, Buson, and later painters. Thejoie de vivre of the paintings matches the often playful inscriptions, translated in the text.

328 Credits and Acknowledgments The majority of Chapter 11, Haiku for Kids, is adapted from the essay "Japanese Poems for American School Kids? or Why and How to Not Teach Haiku", by William J. Higginson, from The Whole Word Catalogue 2, edited by Bill Zavatsky and Ron Padgett, published by McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, New York, copyright 1977 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative. An additional portion of Chapter 11 is by Ron Padgett, consisting of excerpts from his essay "Haiku", from The Whole Word Catalogue 2, edited by Bill Zavatsky and Ron Padgett, published by McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, New York, copyright 1977 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and specially revised for The Haiku Handbook; copyright 1985 by Ron Padgett; used by permission of the author. Chapter 12, A Lesson Plan that Works, was written specially for The Haiku Handbook by Penny Harter; copyright 1985 by Penny Harter; used by permission of the author. Clarence Matsuo-Allard: "somewhere", from Cicada; copyright 1980 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the publisher. Eric W. Amann: "September rains", from Haiku (1967), and "Snow falling" and "Billboards", from The Haiku Anthology, copyright 1974 by Cor van den Heuvel; by permission of the author. Nick Avis: "whale spray!", from Tickle Ace, copyright 1982 by Nick Avis; by permission of the author. Abdelhadi Barchale: "a snail on the stones", copyright 1985 by Abdelhadi Barchale; all rights reserved. Manya Bean: translations from the Greek of George Seferis specially made for this book, copyright 1985 by Manya Bean and Willim J. Higginson; by permission of Manya Bean. Robert Bly: excerpt from "Dropping the Reader", in The Sea and the Honeycomb, The Sixties Press, 1966; by permission of the author. R. H. Blyth, translator: '"What's this for?'", from Senryu: Japanese Satirical Verses, published by Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, all rights reserved; by permission of the publisher. Imma von Bodmershof: "Im grunen Wasser", "Der grobe FluB schweigt", and "Rlickkehr aus Sonne und Schnee" (first version), from Haiku, published by Albert Langen Georg Miiller Verlag, Munchen, copyright 1962 by Albert Langen Georg Muller Verlag, and "GrSber im Nebel" and "Rtickkehr aus Sonne und Schnee" (second version), from Lo'wenzahn, published by Itadori-Hakkosho, Matsuyama, Japan, copyright 1979 by Imma von Bodmershof; by permission of Ehrenfels-Abeille. Jorge Luis Borges and Alastair Reid: "Alto en la cumbre" and the translation, "High on the summit", from El Oro de los Tigres, published by Emece Editores, Buenos Aires, and The Gold of the Tigers: Selected Later Poems, published by E. P. Dutton, New York, Spanish copyright 1972,1975 by Emece Editores, translation copyright 1976, 1977 by Alastair Reid; by permission of the publishers. Janice M. Bostok: "Pregnant again" and "wind" from Walking into the Sun, copyright 1974 by Janice M. Bostok; by permission of the author. Chuck Brickley: "the ledger blurs", from Modern Haiku, copyright 1982 by Chuck Brickley; by permission of the author. Randy Brooks: "late afternoon", from Barbwire Holds its Ground, copyright 1981 by Randy Brooks; by permission of the author. 314

329 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 315 Jack Cain: "fog moves through", "an empty elevator", and "someone's newspaper", from Haiku copyright 1969 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the publisher. Mark Cramer: translation of "El Sauz" by Jose Juan Tablada, previously published in Haiku Magazine, copyright 1972 by William J. Higginson; by permission of the translator. L. A. Davidson: "On the gray church wall", from Haiku West, copyright 1975 by Leroy Kanterman, "beyond", from Haiku Magazine, copyright 1972 by William J. Higginson, and "after all these lighthouses", from Wind Chimes, copyright 1982 by L. A. Davidson; by permission of the author. Vladimir Devide: "Pod kopitima", from Haiku, copyright 1979 by Vladimir Devide; by permission of the author. Juan Jose Domenchina: "Pajaro muerto", from Poesias Completas ( ), published by Signo, Madrid, copyright 1935 by Juan Jose Domenchina; all rights reserved. Betty Drevniok: "Wading out", from Cicada, copyright 1978 by Betty Drevniok; by permission of the author. Michael Dudley: "empty shopping mall", from through the green fuse, copyright 1983 by Michael Dudley; by permission of the author. Andre Duhaime: "une dent en or", from Cicada, copyright 1981 by Andre Duhaime; by permission of the author. Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard, editors and translators, for selections and translations from Haiku: anthologie canadienne/canadian Anthology, published by Les editions Asticou enrg., copyright 1985 by Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard; by permission of the editors. Paul Eluard: "La petite" and "Une plume donne au chapeau", from Premiers Poimes, , published by Mermod; by Edition Gallimard; reprinted by permission. Dee Evetts: "a small ceremony", from Haiku Byways, all rights reserved, copyright 1985 by Dee Evetts; by permission of the author. Christopher Faiers: "Vine Leaves", from Sleeping in Ruins (1981); by permission of the author. John Gould Fletcher: an excerpt from the introduction to Kenneth Yasuda's A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku, published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, copyright 1946 by Alfred A. Knopf; reprinted as A Pepper-Pod: A Haiku Sampler, by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Tokyo and Rutland, Vermont, copyright 1976 by Kenneth Yasuda; by permission of Charles E. Tuttle Co. Soichi Furuta: "a late day in Vienna" and "a guru leering", from a man never becoming a line, copyright 1979 Edition Heliodor; by permission of the author. Larry Gates: "Test Pattern", from Haiku, copyright 1971 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the author. Anton Gerits: "een duivepaar", from Alleen wanneer ik kijk, published by De Oude Degel, Eemnes, Netherlands, copyright 1984 by Anton Gerits; by permission of the author. Allen Ginsberg: "Looking over my shoulder", "Lying on my side", "Winter Haiku", and "Haiku = objective images... ", all from Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, copyright 1977 by Allen Ginsberg; by permission of the author. Sanford Goldstein: "this summer night", from This Tanka World, copyright 1977 by Sanford Goldstein; by permission of the author. LeRoy Gorman: "a diver brings up the body", from High /Coo, copyright 1978 by LeRoy Gorman, and "she dresses", from the Canadian Haiku Anthology, copyright 1979 by LeRoy Gorman; by permission of the author.

330 316 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dag HammarskjOld: "Sn5 i april", "Cikadorna skrek", and "Annu langt frsn stranden", from Vagmttrken, published by Albert Bonniers FOrlag, Stockholm, copyright 1963 by Albert Bonniers FOrlag; by permission of the publisher. Lorraine Ellis Harr: "Spring moon", from Modern Haiku, copyright 1974 by Kay T. Mormino; by permission of the author. Penny Harter: "the old doll", from The Orange Balloon, copyright 1980 by Penny Harter; "spring rain", from Cicada, copyright 1981 by Penny Harter; and "snowflakes", copyright 1985 by Penny Harter; by permission of the author. Hashimoto Takako: kiri no naka, copyright 1941 by Hashimoto Takako; hi o keseba, copyright 1948 by Hashimoto Takako; araigami, copyright 1962 by Hashimoto Takako; and ryuto ni, copyright 1959 by Hashimoto Takako; by permission of Hashimoto Miyoko. Robert Hayden: "Smelt Fishing", from The Night-Blooming Cereus, from Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems, by Robert Hayden, published by Liveright, New York, copyright 1975, 1972, 1970, 1966 by Robert Hayden; reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Karel Hellemans: "de asters bloeian", from De Heuvels Rondom, copyright 1981 by Karel Hellemans; by permission of the author Use Hensel: "auf kahlem acker", from apropos, number 1/82; copyright 1985 by Use Hensel; by permission of the author. William J. Higginson: "Pause after", from Haiku, copyright 1970 by Eric W. Amann, "drove past", from "Riverdale Walk", which appeared in the Third Coast Haiku Anthology, copyright 1978 by William J. Higginson, "Holding the water", from Haiku West, copyright 1970 by Leroy Kanterman, and excerpts from "Traditional Haiku Techniques", which first appeared in The Windless Orchard, copyright 1971 by William J. Higginson; by permission of the author. William J. Higginson, translator: "the nail box" by Ozaki Hosai, from thistle brilliant morning, copyright 1975 by William J. Higginson, by permission of the translator; "Mid- Mountain Dialogue" by Li Po, from Sun, copyright 1977 by Bill Zavatsky, by permission of the publisher; for excerpts from "From the Traveller's Heart", published in Haiku, copyright 1969 by Eric W. Amann, by permission of the publisher; for excerpts from "Poems from Itadori", published in Haiku, copyright 1968 by Eric W. Amann, by permission of the publisher. William J. Higginson and Tadashi Kondo, translators: Basho's "Record of Rakushusha", from Haiku Magazine, copyright 1976 by William J. Higginson; by permission of the translators. Gary Hotham: "to hear them", from Without the Mountains, copyright 1976 by Gary Hotham, and "Sunset dying", from Haiku Magazine, copyright 1969 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the author. Clement Hoyt: "A Hallowe'en mask", from Storm of Stars, published by The Green World, Baton Rouge, copyright 1976 by Violet Hoyt, and "While the guests order", from American Haiku, copyright 1963 by James Bull; by permission of Esther Jean Hoyt, Isabel H. Browning, Vera G. Heath, and Constance L. Heath. Ishikawa Takuboku: "came to", translated by Carl Sesar, from Takuboku: Poems to Eat, published by Kodansha International Ltd., copyright 1966 by Carl Sesar; by permission of the translator. Itadori Hakkosho: "Autumn Loneliness Selections": by Ueda Isemi, Takahashi Kazuo, Fujimoto Kanseki, Matsuura Takuya, Sakai Yamahiko, Kinoshita Michiteru, Oka Sueno, Takeda Chie, Ebisuya

331 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 317 Kiyoko, and Izumi Sumie, from Itadori, copyright 1967; by permission of Kawamoto Yogo. Chusaburo Koshu Ito: asatsuyu ni, from Paper Doors: An Anthology of Japanese-Canadian Poetry, published by The Coach House Press, Toronto, copyright 1981 by Chusaburo Koshu Ito; by permission of the author. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai): excerptsfrom Haikai and Haiku, published in 1958 by The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai, Tokyo; all rights reserved; by permission of the publisher. Hajo Jappe: "Fern nun die Berge", from Haiku, Folge 2, copyright 1970 by Hajo Jappe; by permission of the author. Foster Jewell: "Only scattered stars", from American Haiku, copyright 1968 by James Bull, and "Under ledges", from Sand Waves, copyright 1969 by Foster Jewell; by permission of Rhoda de Long Jewell. Brian Joyce: "straightening up", from Tweed, copyright 1974 by Janice M. Bostok; by permission of the publisher. Kamiko Yoshiko: "Daddy", and Haruna Kimura for the English translation, from There Are Two Lives: Poems by Children of Japan, edited by Richard Lewis, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, copyright 1970 by Richard Lewis and Haruna Kimura; reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Kaneko Tota: kawa no ha yuku, copyright 1971 by Kaneko Tota; two poems beginning aoi kuma, and three beginning hone no sake, copyright 1972 by Kaneko Tota; by permission of the author. Kato Shuson: kanrai ya, copyright 1948 by Katd Shuson; torono and hi no oku ni, copyright 1948 by Kato Shuson; ganka tsugaru and uma arau, copyright 1955 by Kato Shuson; kajikamitsutsu and hiete takumashi, copyright 1967 by Kato Shuson; all rights reserved. Kawahigashi Hekigod5: W hanabi, copyright 1896 by Kawahigashi Hekigodo; konogoro tsuma naki, copyright 1926 by Kawahigashi Hekigodo; tonbo tsuru, copyright 1929 by Kawahigashi Hekigodo; and toku tataki ki, copyright 1914 by Kawahigashi Hekigodo; all rights reserved. Kawamoto Gafu, Takahashi Nobuyuki, and William J. Higginson: an excerpt from "My Favorite Poems From the Traveler's Heart", originally published in the Ehime Shimbun, copyright 1969, translation from Haiku, copyright 1969; by permission of Kawamoto Yogo, Takahashi Nobuyuki, and William J. Higginson. Adele Kenny: "turning in bed", from High/Coo, copyright 1980 by Adele Kenny; by permission of the author. Jack Kerouac: "Birds singing", "Useless, useless", and "Missing a kick", from Scattered Poems, published by City Lights Books, San Francisco, copyright 1971 by the estate of Jack Kerouac; by permission of the publisher. Jack Kerouac: excerpt from Desolation Angels, published by Coward-McCann, Inc., New York, copyright 1960,1963,1965 by Jack Kerouac; reprinted by permission of Coward-McCann, Inc. and The Sterling Lord Agency, Inc. Gustave Keyser: "Steady fall of rain", from Haiku West, copyright 1972 by Leroy Kanterman; by permission of the publisher. Etheridge Knight: excerpts from "A Statement from Etheridge Knight", from Frogpond, copyright 1982 by Etheridge Knight; and for "Under moon shadows" and "The Penal Farm", from Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, copyright 1980 by Etheridge Knight; by permission of the author. Tadashi Kondo: excerpts from a letter on renga, copyright 1985 by Tadashi Kondo; by permission of the author. Kusano Shimpei: excerpt

332 318 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS from "hachijo rhapsody", from frogs &. others., translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, a Mushinsha Limited Book, published m 1969 by Grossman Publishers, New York, all rights reserved; by permission of Mushinsha Limited. Elizabeth Searle Lamb: "pausing", "in the hot sun", "Deep into this world", and "Broken kite, sprawled", from in this blaze of sun, copyright 1975 by Elizabeth Searle Lamb; "a plastic rose", from Brussels Sprout, copyright 1982 by Elizabeth Searle Lamb; and "Sequence from Lagos, Nigeria", from Frogpond, copyright 1981 by Elizabeth Searle Lamb; by permission of the author. Julius Lester: "Spring dawn", from Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets, copyright 1967 by Julius Lester; by permission of the author. Geraldine C. Little: "The white spider", from Dragonfly, copyright 1973 by J & C Transcripts; "a warm wind", from Frogpond, copyright 1982 by Geraldine C. Little; and "Fallen horse", from Haiku Magazine, copyright 1971 by William J. Higginson; by permission of the author. David Lloyd: "The silence", from Dragonfly, copyright 1973 by J & C Transcripts; and "Moonlit sleet", from Haiku, copyright 1971 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the author. Gerry Loose: "each", from Tweed, copyright 1972 by Janice M. Bostok; by permission of the publisher. Amy Lowell: "Autumn Haze", from Pictures of the Floating World, from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, copyright 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company, copyright renewed by Houghton Mifflin Company, Brinton P. Roberts, Esq., G. D'Andelot Belin, Esq.; reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Peggy Willis Lyles: "Still damp", from Wind Chimes, copyright 1982 by Peggy Willis Lyles, and "Before we knew", from Brussels Sprout, copyright 1981 by Peggy Willis Lyles; by permission of the author. Antonio Machado: "Canta, canta, canta", and excerpts from "Apuntes", from Poesias Completas, seventh edition, published by Espasa-Calpe, S. A., Madrid, copyright 1956 by Espasa-Calpe, S. A.; all rights reserved. Michael McClintock: "as far toward the trees", and "the old pond", from Maya, copyright 1975 by Michael McClintock; "rowing downstream" (first version), from Haiku Byways, copyright 1971 by Michael McClintock; "rowing downstream" (second version), and "dead cat", from Light Run, copyright 1971 by Michael McClintock; "hungry", from Man With No Face, copyright 1974 by Michael McClintock; by permission of the author. Philip Meredith, Tadashi Kondo, Robert Reed, Kris Young, and Timothy Knowles: "Eleven Hours, or Morning Wind", copyright 1985 by Tadashi Kondo and Kris Young; by permission of the authors. Miyamori Asataro: an excerpt from An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, published by Maruzen Company, Ltd., Tokyo, copyright 1932 by Miyamori Asataro; and reprinted by Taiseido Shobu Co., Tokyo; all rights reserved. Mizuhara Shuoshi: tsubo ni shite, copyright 1935 by Mizuhara Shuoshi; Oki inu, copyright 1952 by Mizuhara Shuoshi; numa mo ta mo, copyright 1973 by Mizuhara Shuoshi; and moya nokoru, copyright 1973 by Mizuhara Shuoshi; by permission of Mizuhara Shizu. Mori Sumio: kari no kazu, copyright 1972 by Mori Sumio; by permission of the author. Ivan Morris: an excerpt from The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, copyright 1964 by Ivan Morris; by per-

333 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 319 mission of the publisher. William R. Mosolino: "Jeep tracks", from Fifty Haiku, copyright 1977 by William R. Mosolino; by permission of the author. Marlene Mountain: "one fly", from Cicada, copyright 1978 by Marlene Wills; "on this cold", from moment moment /moments, copyright 1978 by Marlene Wills; and "at dusk", from the old tin roof, copyright 1976 by Marlene Wills; by permission of the author. Maria Luisa Mufioz: "Duermen las aves", from Miniaturas, copyright 1982 by Maria Luisa Munoz; by permission of the author. Nakamura Kusatao: naki tomo kata ni, copyright 1947 by Nakamura Kusatao; yake ato ni, copyright 1945 by Nakamura Kusatao; mikazuki noseta, copyright 1953 by Nakamura Kusatao; tsuma dakana, copyright 1938 by Nakamura Kusatao; and sora wa taisho no, copyright 1946 by Nakamura Kusatao; by permission of Nakamura Yumiko. Takeo Ujo Nakano: "rokkiisan", from Nikkeijin Hyakunen-Sai Kinen Kusha, published by The Continental Times, copyright 1979 by Takeo Ujo Nakano; by permission of the author. Nakatsuka Ippekiro: natsu-asa hinmin, copyright 1920 by Nakatsuka Ippekiro; kuraku natsu, copyright 1942 by Nakatsuka Ippekiro; yama-nobe no tori, copyright 1928 by Nakatsuka Ippekiro; kusa ao-ao, copyright 1928 by Nakatsuka Ippekiro; aki no hi no hinaka, copyright 1920 by Nakatsuka Ippekiro; by permission of Nakatsuka Mayumi. Aleksandar Nejgebauer: "Ispod meseca", from Haiku, copyright 1977 by Aleksandar Nejgebauer; all rights reserved. Tomi Nishimura: "momo taburu", from Nikkeijin Hyakunen-Sai Kinen Kusha, published by The Continental Times, copyright 1979 by Tomi Nishimura; by permission of the author. Ana Rosa Nunez: "Ha vuelto del cansancio", from Escamas del Caribe, copyright 1971 by Ana Rosa Nunez; by permission of the author. Ogiwara Seisensui: poems included here by permission of Ogihara Kaiichi. Bill Pauly, visual poem, from Wind The Clock By Bittersweet, copyright 1977 by Bill Pauly; by permission of the author. Octavio Paz: "El dia abre la mano", "Nino y trompo", and "Ante la puerta", from Libertad bajo palabra: obra poitica, copyright 1960 by Octavio Paz; by permission of the author. Donald Philippi, translator: "The sound", from This Wine of Peace, This Wine of Laughter: A Complete Anthology of Japan's Earliest Songs, a Mushinsha Limited Book, published in 1968 by Grossman Publishers, New York, all rights reserved; by permission of Mushinsha Limited. Alphonse Piche, from Haiku: anthologie canadienne/ Canadian Anthology, published by Les editions Asticou enrg., copyright 1985 by Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard; by permission of the author. Alan Pizzarelli: "drop of ocean", from Karma Poems, copyright 1974 by Alan Pizzarelli, and "buzzz", from ZenryU and other works 1974, copyright 1975 by Alan Pizzarelli; by permission of the author. Ezra Pound: "I have felt the lithe wind", from Collected Early Poems, published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, copyright 1976 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust, and for "In a Station of the Metro" ("The apparition of these faces in the crowd"), from Personae, copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound; by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber, Ltd., from Collected Early Poems and Collected Shorter Poems by Ezra Pound. Claire Pratt: "On this still hot day", from Canadian

334 320 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Haiku Anthology, copyright 1979 by Claire Pratt; by permission of the author. Marjory Bates Pratt: "Not a breath of air", from American Haiku, copyright 1965 by James Bull; by permission of the publisher. Katarina Psak: "Drndaju kola", from Haiku, copyright 1977 by Katarina Psak; by permission of the author. Charles Reznikoff: "The twigs tinge the winter sky", from Poems Volume I of The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney, published by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, copyright 1976 by Charles Reznikoff, and for "Horsefly", from Poems Volume II of The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, edited by Seamus Cooney, published by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Barbara, copyright 1977 by Marie Syrkin Reznikoff; by permission of the publisher. Marion J. Richardson: "Twilight", from Wind Chimes, copyright 1982 by Marion Richardson; by permission of the author. Rainer Maria Rilke for "Kleine Motten taumeln schauernd auer aus dem Buchs", and "Entre ses vingt fards", from Samtliche Werke, published by Insel-Verlag, Wiesbaden, copyright 1957 by Insel-Verlag; by permission of the publisher. Frank K. Robinson: "the elevator", from Bonsai, copyright 1976 by Jan and Mary Streif; by permission of the author. Raymond Roseliep: "after Beethoven", from Cicada, copyright 1981 by Raymond Roseliep, and "factory whistle", from Firefly in My Eyecup, published by High/Coo, copyright 1979 by Raymond Roseliep; by permission of the Estate of Raymond Roseliep. Sydell Rosenberg: "In the laundermat", from Modern Haiku, copyright 1972 by Kay T. Mormino, "Library closing", from Haiku, copyright 1968 by Eric W. Amann, and "As the sun sets", from American Haiku, copyright 1967 by James Bull; by permission of the author. Alexis Rotella: "Shiva", from Clouds in My Teacup, copyright 1982 by Alexis Rotella; by permission of the author. Hal Roth: "lightning flash", from Frogpond, copyright 1982 by Hal Roth, and excerpts from Behind the Fireflies, copyright 1982 by Hal Roth; by permission of the author. Eric Sackheim, translator: "Fog Clings", from The Silent Firefly: Japanese Songs of Love and Other Things, published by Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo, copyright 1963 by Eric Sackheim; by permission of the translator. Saito Mokichi: poems included here by permission of Saito Shigeta. Emiko Sakurai: who collaborated with me in producing seven of the translations from the work of Issa in this book (identified in the text); copyright 1985 by Emiko Sakurai and William J. Higginson; by permission of the translators. Margaret Saunders: "After", from Cicada, copyright 1978 by Margaret Saunders; by permission of the author. William Leonard Schwartz: reprinting the following authors and works indicated in The Imaginative Interpretation of The Far East in Modern French Literature, , published at Paris by Librairie Ancienne Honore Champion, 1927: Julien Vocance, excerpts from «:Cent Visions de Guerre», from Grande Revue, May 1916; Maurice Betz, "Un trou d'obus", from Scaferlati pour troupes, 1921; Rene Maublanc, "Demontes apres la fete", from Poimes, 1922, and "Le del noir", from Cent Halkal', published in Maupre, 1924; Albert Poncin, "Le banc de bois est humide", from Le Pampre, October 1923; Jean Beaucomont, "Le train arrivait", from Gouttelettes, Halkal'et Outa, published in Maupre, 1924; reprinted by

335 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 321 permission of Slatkine Reprints. George Seferis: "Drip in the lake", "In the Museum Garden", "Night, the wind", and "You write", from Tetradio Gymnasmaton, published by Icaros, Athens, copyright 1940, and "1 January [1931]", from Meres, Volume I, 16 February August 1931, published by Icaros, Athens, copyright 1975 by Ikaros; by permission of the publisher. Martin Shea: "the long night", from Modern Haiku, copyright 1973 by Kay T. Mormino; by permission of the author. Gerry Shikitani and David Aylward, editors: Aylward's translations from Paper Doors: An Anthology of Japanese-Canadian Poetry, published by The Coach House Press, Toronto, copyright 1981 by Gerry Shikitani and David Aylward; by permission of the authors and translator. Gary Snyder: "This morning" and "leaning in the doorway whistling", from Earth House Hold, published by New Directions, copyright 1969 by Gary Snyder; reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Sabine Sommerkamp: "Mein Gartchen verkauft ", copyright 1985 by Sabine Sommerkamp; by permission of the author. Mabelsson O Southard: "The water deepens", from American Haiku, copyright 1965 by James Bull; by permission of the author. Robert Spiess: "Snowing", from The Shape of Water, copyright 1982 by Robert Spiess; "An evening cricket", from American Haiku, copyright 1968 by James Bull, "Muttering thunder", from The Turtle's Ears, copyright 1971 by Robert Spiess; by permission of the author. Ruby Spriggs: "moment of birth", from Haiku: anthologie canadienne/ Canadian Anthology, published by Les editions Asticou enrg., copyright 1985 by Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard; by permission of the author. Selma Stefanile: "a yellow leaf", from J Know a Wise Bird, copyright 1980 by Selma Stefanile, and "Wabash", from The Poem Beyond My Reach, copyright 1982 by Selma Stefanile; by permission of the author. Wallace Stevens: an excerpt from "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens; by permission of the publisher. Lucien Stryk: excerpts from "Noboru Fujiwara, Haiku Poet", in Encounter with Zen: Writings on Poetry and Zen by Lucien Stryk, published 1982 by Swallow Press, copyright 1979 by The Georgia Review; reprinted with the permission of Ohio University Press. George Swede: "Passport check", from Cicada, copyright 1978 by George Swede, and for an excerpt from "The Role of Haiku in Poetry Therapy", from Cicada, copyright 1978 by George Swede; by permission of the author. Jose Juan Tablada: "El Sauz", "Oiseau", and "Looping the Loop", from Obras, 1 Poesfa, edited by Hector Valdes, published by Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Ciudad Universitaria, copyright 1971 by Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; by permission of the publisher. Takahama Kyoshi: poems included here by permission of Takahama Kimiko, owner, Hototogisu Publishing Company. Takayanagi Shigenobu: mi o sorasu, copyright 1950 by Takayanagi Shigenobu, and sanmyaku no, copyright 1951 by Takayanagi Shigenobu; by permission of Nakamura Sonoko. Taneda Santoka: poems included here by permission of Oyama Sumita. Tanizaki Junichiro: excerpt from In Praise of

336 322 CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Shadows, translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, published by Leete's Island Books, Box 1131, New Haven, CT 06505, copyright 1977 by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker; by permission of the publisher. James Tipton: "A boy wading", from Haiku Highlights, copyright 1970 by J & C Transcripts, and "the old barber", from Haiku Magazine, copyright 1972 by William J. Higginson; by permission of the author. Tomiyasu Fusei: hana kuzu ni, copyright 1920, by permission of Tomiyasu Toshiko. Tomizawa Kakio: toten ni, copyright 1940 by Tomizawa Kakio, and Junko!, copyright 1941 by Tomizawa Kakio; by permission of Miyoshi Junko. Chris Torrance: "white butterfly, blue cabbage", from Haiku Byways, copyright 1971 by Chris Torrance, all rights reserved. Cor van den Heuvel: "in the toy pail", "snow", and "a black model-t ford", from sun in skull, copyright 1961 by Cor van den Heuvel; "an empty wheelchair" and "in the hotel lobby", from the window-washer's pail, copyright 1963 by Cor van den Heuvel; "a milkweed seed", from dark, copyright 1982 by Cor van den Heuvel; and "the little girl", from a personal note, copyright 1985 by Cor van den Heuvel; by permission of the author. Jocelyne Villeneuve: "Pique-nique", from Haiku: anthologie canadienne/ Canadian Anthology, published by Les editions Asticou enrg., copyright 1985 by Andre Duhaime and Dorothy Howard; by permission of the author. Anita Virgil: "not seeing", "red flipped out", and "walking the snow-crust", from A 2nd Flake, copyright 1974 by Anita Virgil; by permission of Anita Virgil Garner. Nicholas Virgilio: "Bass", from American Haiku, copyright 1963 by James Bull; "Into the blinding sun", from American Haiku, copyright 1964 by James Bull; and "Autumn twilight", from Haiku West, copyright 1967 by Leroy Kanterman; by permission of the author. Joyce Webb: "rain... washing away", from Haiku Highlights, copyright 1970 by J & C Transcripts; by permission of the publisher. Beverly White: "where peonies bloom", from days of sun nights of moon; by permission of the author. Larry Wiggin: "cleaning whelks", from Haiku, copyright 1970 by Eric W. Amann; by permission of the publisher.. Paul O. Williams: "the flick of high beams", from Frogpond, copyright 1982 by Paul O. Williams; by permission of the author. William Carlos Williams: "Lines", from The Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams, published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, copyright 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corporation, and an excerpt from the "Author's Introduction" to The Wedge, from The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams, published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York, copyright 1944 by William Carlos Williams; reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Rod Willmot: "Listening", from Haiku, published by Les Editions Particulieres, Quebec, copyright 1969 by Les Editions Particulieres; by permission of the author. John Wills: "New Year's Day", from Haiku, copyright 1969 by Eric W. Amann; "the moon at dawn", and "a mayfly" from river, copyright 1970 by John Wills; and "keep out sign", printed on notepaper; by permission of the author. Richard Wright: "Coming from the woods", "Just enough of rain", and "In the falling snow", fron Richard Wright Reader, edited by Ellen Wright and Michel Fabre,